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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



A MEMORIAL 



OF 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 



BY THE 



GEORGIA BAR ASSOCIATION 









Copyrighted 1909 

BY 

The Georgia Bar Association 



| LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

MAY 10 W9 

Copyrignt Entry 
CLASCH*** No 



CONTENTS. 

Sketch of Chief Justice Bleckley by Committee of Georgia Bar 

Association 3 

Memorial Proceedings in Supreme Court of Georgia 19 

Logan E. Bleckley. Sketch by Walter B. Hill 45 

A Letter to Posterity 61 

Truth at the Bar 71 

Law as a Rule of Feeling 89 

Emotional Justice 97 

Wisdom 109 

Report of Committee on Judicial Administration and Remedial 

Procedure. Georgia Bar Association (1884) 121 

The Poet Bleckley. By John W. Akin 133 

Truth in Thought and Emotion 173 

Truth in Conduct 185 

The Rights of Mind „ 209 

The Judge as a Factor in Trials of Fact 221 

The Law and the Irrelevant 231 

Value as Quality 237 

Wit and Wisdom of Chief Justice L. E. Bleckley in the Geor- 
gia Reports. By Albert H. Russell 249 

Miscellaneous Thoughts 289 



®fns tribute 

of the Georgia Bar Association to the memory of Chief Justice 
Bleckley, is published in pursuance of the Resolution adopted, 
May 28th, 1908, at its Twenty-fifth session, whereby the under- 
signed were appointed a committee to "publish in a bound vol- 
ume, the Memorial then read; that contained in the Supreme 
Court Report, and, such writings from the pen of Judge Bleckley 
and other matter as in the judgment of the committee, portray 
his remarkable characteristics, personal, judicial and professional." 

J. R. Lamar, Chairman. 
Joel Branham, 
H. H. Perry, 
Albert H. Russell, 

Committee. 
November, 1908. 



SKETCH OF 
CHIEF JUSTICE BLECKLEY, 

prepared by special committee and read by J. R. Lamar, of 
Augusta, Georgia, at the twenty-fifth annual meet- 
ing of the Georgia Bar Association, 
May 30th, 1908. 



Reprinted from the Annual Report. 



1909 

The J. W. Burke Company 

Macon. Georgia 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY. 

Jurist, philosopher, mathematician, poet. A colossal and 
unique figure. A born judge, whose first public utterance was 
a plea for the creation of the court of which he was to be an 
illustrious chief justice. 

The constitutional amendment providing for a Supreme 
Court had been duly ratified in 1836, but the game of politics, 
with the determined hostility of those who opposed its organi- 
zation, had prevailed, and, for several sessions the General As- 
sembly met and adjourned without passing the act necessary to 
make the amendment effective. Living in the remote mountains 
of Rabun was a frail and sickly lad of thirteen — older than his 
years — with the judicial instinct so strongly developed that he 
recognized the subtle principle which made the failure to act a 
positive wrong, and the pen which was destined to illustrate 
the pages of Georgia's judicial history, began its work with an 
article in the newspaper of an adjoining county, in which the 
boy joined issue with the General Assembly, and, passing all 
questions of expediency, maintained the proposition that the au- 
thority to create was a command to organize, and that the Leg- 
islature, in its non-action, was guilty of a positive violation of 
the Constitution of the State. 

This was not precocity, but maturity of thought, only 
equaled by the freshness of mind which characterized Judge 
Bleckley as a patriarch in years. Typical old age lives in the 
past, but this old man, with youthful heart and brain, keenly 
alive to the present, hopeful of the future, insisted (7 Ga. 
Bar Rep. 20) that he "intended always to be one of the young 
men;" acknowledged that he "depended for progress upon pos- 
terity," and while conceding that "conservatism was all well 
enough in its place, awaited hopefully the arrival of posterity 
to make the needed changes in the administration of the law." 

Of Judge Bleckley's ancestry, we know that his father was 



6 A MEMORIAL OF 

English and Irish, and his mother was of German descent. His 
great-grandfather, George Lutes, a native of Bavaria or Wer- 
temberg, came first to Pennsylvania, and afterwards settled in 
North Carolina; thence he moved to Virginia where his pater- 
nal grandfather was born, and later moved to Georgia. His 
father, James Bleckley, married Catherine Lutes in 1823 and 
lived in Rabun County, Georgia, where, on July 3, 1827, Logan 
Edwin Bleckley was born. 

The influence of his German ancestry manifested itself in 
the subtlety and acuteness of his mind, the love of mathematics 
and metaphysics, and his unsurpassed facility in making clear 
the abstruse and abstract. The character of his father, however, 
more profoundly affected the son, who cherished for him the 
tenderest affection, and of whom (12 Ga. Bar Rep. 114) he 
wrote: "He had great solidity of personal character, and its 
basis was Truth. In word and in deed, he was a true man. 
Such was his estimation of veracity that he taught his children, 
as a standing precept, that theft, criminal and degrading as it 
is, is less abhorent than deliberate falsehood. The reason he 
gave was that society has more defenses against the violator of 
property than it has against a violator of the Truth, and that 
to reform the tongue is a more hopeless task than to restrain 
the hand." 

We find here the key-note of Judge Bleckley's character. In 
all his utterances, public and private, Truth is adored, deified. 
This abiding sentiment found a notable expression in a re- 
markable address on "Truth at the Bar," (3 Ga. Bar Rep., 107) 
which he begins by saying "Law is the scripture of Justice, the 
Gospel of Right, and Truth is the Minister at its Altars. Error 
is a pretender to Holy Orders, — a wolf in sheep's clothing, al- 
ways striving to usurp the sacred office, or to share in the exer- 
cise of its functions. To exclude Error from the sanctuary, and 
to admit and keep Truth within, are objects of sedulous en- 
deavor in every system of enlightened jurisprudence." 

James Bleckley was a farmer, and a man of great influence 
in his community — successively sheriff, clerk, ordinary and 
judge of the County Court. The son's mental attainments 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 7 

would have fitted him for either a literary or a scientific calling, 
but the legal environments of the head of the mountain home 
naturally impelled him towards the bar, and, at an age when 
most of his companions were struggling with the multiplication 
table, this boy of eleven had begun the study of law. (22 Ga. 
Bar Rep., 143). It is doubtful if there is to be found in the 
biographies of lawyers or judges a parallel case, where one so 
young, undertook, of his own accord, a study so uninteresting 
to the youthful mind. Books were few. It was before the days 
of the Code, or Cobb's Digest. But it is of the essence of ge- 
nius not to be deterred by difficulties. He says (4 Greenbag, 
p. 50, — 1892) he "had contracted a relish for the Law,, and, in 
his father's office, became familiar with legal documents and 
forms of procedure. The Statutes, strange to say, were pleas- 
ant reading, and, at intervals," he "read them with assiduity." 
By the time he was sixteen, he had what he calls a "boy's ac- 
quaintance" with many legal topics. He was wholly self- 
taught, without even the Primer of the Law from which to get 
a clue to the maze. He constantly attended courts, and J. W. H. 
Underwood, Esq., having expressed the opinion that young 
Logan would make a lawyer, loaned him Blackstone's Commen- 
taries. He never forgot this act of kindness, and many years 
afterwards, on the occasion of the memorial exercises in the 
Supreme Court in honor of Judge Underwood, the Chief Jus- 
tice said: "On that day I received from him in the town of 
Clarkesville the two volumes which I now hold in my hand. I 
put them in my saddlebags and rode twenty-five miles to Clay- 
ton, and that evening, as soon as I reached home, I opened the 
first volume and read the first line of Blackstone. In April, 
1846, less than two years after he sent me the books, he was one 
of the three legal gentlemen who certified to the usual legal fic- 
tion that I was well qualified for admission to the bar. I have 
here his certificate to that effect," (producing it and the two vol- 
umes). Those who know his absolute honesty, not only of con- 
duct but of mind, his abhorrence of debt, or obligation in any 
form, will not be surprised that, in the same memorial, he said : 
"I want to observe, as I have produced the books, that, wishing 



8 A MEMORIAL OF 

to keep them, he kindly allowed me, long afterwards, to pur- 
chase and pay for them, and they thus became my property." 
(83 Ga., 818). 

Soon after his admission to the bar, he witnessed the im- 
prisonment of a woman for debt. This so profoundly moved 
him that he prepared a bill to exempt women from arrest for 
debt, secured its introduction into the General Assembly, and 
its enactment into law — thus making him the Georgia pioneer 
in the movement which gradually expanded, until it was de- 
clared by the Constitution that there should be no imprison- 
ment for debt, and this ancient relic was entirely blotted from 
the laws of Georgia. (16 Ga. Bar Rep. 8). 

The young lawyer's success was not immediate. He says: 
(Greenbag, 4th Vol., p. 50) "Though for the two following 
years I had a monopoly of the minor practice, and a fraction of 
that which was of some importance, the litigation of one 
sparsely settled mountain county which fell to my share was 
too inconsiderable to break the continuity of my studies, or 
rather my legal meditations. . . . My professional income 
for these two years, not counting insolvent fees, amounted to 
between $35.00 and $50.00 per annum. Having no means with 
which to establish myself elsewhere and wait for a clientage, I 
determined to suspend practice and engage in a more lucrative 
department of labor until I could accumulate a small capital. I 
sought and obtained employment as bookkeeper in the State 
Railroad office in Atlanta, and remained for three years — my 
compensation ranging from $40.00 to $66.00 per month. In 
the fourth year, I was transferred to Milledgeville, then the 
capital, being appointed one of the Governor's Secretaries, with 
a salary of $1,200.00. A new incumbent of the executive's 
chair was inaugurated in 1851, and both my health and my poli- 
tics needing repairs, I returned to private life and opened an 
office in Atlanta. Clients gradually ventured within my cham- 
bers, and I soon had a moderate prosperity, due chiefly to ac- 
quaintance made in railroad circles during my three years' ser- 
vice as a railroad clerk." 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 9 

These extra-professional engagements ultimately proved of 
great value. He then laid the foundations for that astonish- 
ingly broad and accurate knowledge as to business and cor- 
porate methods which so often surprised those who knew him 
only as the writer of opinions so brilliant as to suggest that his 
talents lay in a literary, rather than in a professional field. 

Returning from Milledgeville to Atlanta, he continued in 
the practice of the law until 1856, when, although he was a 
Democrat, and that party was in the minority, he was elected 
Solicitor-General of the Coweta Circuit over his Whig com- 
petitors. He has left on record a most amusing account of his 
success, notwithstanding his inability to electioneer. He says 
that he was anxious to submit to election, but not willing to 
struggle for it, and one of the Whig candidates having been 
withdrawn, their whole vote came to his support. "I had no 
Cause to anticipate this timely rally of my political adversaries 
to my assistance, and it surprised me almost as much as it grati- 
fied me, and it did gratify me profoundly, for when one is a 
candidate, it is a pleasant thing to be elected, even by the votes 
of the opposition." He served out his term of four years as 
Solicitor, and, in 1864, was appointed Reporter by the Judges 
of the Supreme Court. Owing to the war, and to the fact that, 
in a large measure, the courts were practically closed, two small 
volumes contain the report of the work of the Supreme Court 
for four full years. While the volume of his work was not 
great, his characteristic individuality expressed itself, and those 
who are familiar with his style will see it manifested in the 
Statement of Facts in 34 and 35 Georgia Reports, as, for ex- 
ample, in Jordan vs. Faircloth, 34 Ga., 47. He was particu- 
larly qualified for such work, for while he was a man of gigan- 
tic intellect, he gave the closest attention to details. He was 
methodical to a remarkable degree. He kept note-books in 
which he entered the substance of what he had once learned, 
the result of which was that, when he had once read a book or 
a case, he not only had it in his mind, but he had ready means 
of access to the source of his knowledge. Thus, by making 
thorough work of it once, he avoided the labor of having to do 



10 A MEMORIAL OF 

it again. He had no desire to perform the labors of Sisyphus. 
He was the first to prepare a Table of the Georgia cases, show- 
ing where they had been subsequently cited, and this he printed 
in the 35th Georgia and gave the results of his private study to 
the profession. 

He resigned the office of Reporter in 1867, and again re- 
turned to the practice in Atlanta, where he remained until 1875, 
when he was offered the appointment of Judge of the Supreme 
Court. He at first declined that appointment, but later accepted 
it and entered upon the work which made him famous. On ac- 
count of overwork, he resigned in 1880. In 1887 he was ap- 
pointed Chief Justice, and held that office until 1894, when he 
again resigned on account of overwork, but ever afterwards 
was recognized by the people, by the bar, by his successors on 
the bench, as Justice Emeritus, and, even after his retirement, 
at the request of the Court, prepared the notable opinion in the 
Greene case, 97 Ga., 36. 

This is a brief record of the professional occupation, the 
offices held, and the work done by Judge Bleckley. There is 
nothing extraordinary in such a record. During much of the 
time, he was not burdened with practice; but these years in 
which he said that he had so little to do as a practitioner, were 
not wasted, but were utilized in most extensive professional ami 
general studies. Many years afterwards, in an address before 
the Bar Association, 17 Georgia Bar Reports, 201, he said that 
"Most of us make a great mistake in not giving proper atten- 
tion to the philosophical elements of the law, and in not prose- 
cuting through life that side of professional study and learning. 
We become absorbed too exclusively in the particular rules and 
practical details of the law, to the neglect of general principles — 
those broad principles which have their roots in natural and 
universal law. To be real lawyers, and not mere practitioners, 
we must give due attention to these and not limit our vision to 
mere municipal law." 

This advice to others given in his last years, he had acted 
upon all through a long life. He had had a most limited training 
in a mountain school, and yet without other literary or profes- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 11 

sional advantages, he was, at the time of his death probably the 
most learned lawyer in the State, and, in many respects, among 
the most learned in the country; learned not only in modern 
and practical law, but learned in the blackletter of the law. He 
was wholly self-taught, and yet had thoroughly mastered the 
works which the old-time lawyers studied ; had read and di- 
gested many old volumes, the very names of which the mod- 
ern lawyer does not know. His peculiar metaphysical turn of 
mind enabled him to read with ease, and even pleasure, books 
like "Coke on Littleton," "Fearne on Contingent Remainders," 
and "Hargraves Readings on the Statute of Uses." But, thor- 
ough as was his knowledge in the law, ancient and modern, 
State and Federal; familiar as he was with the decisions of our 
own Court which he had mastered and indexed for his own 
private use, yet his reading in other departments was even 
greater than it was in that of the law. While he refers to him- 
self as a religious "suspect," and while his two poems, "Faith" 
and "Fear," show him to have been what might be called a 
reverent Agnostic, he had read and thought on theological 
questions quite as much as he had on legal questions, — indeed, 
in one of his addresses before the Association, he says that he 
had thought more on the subject of religion than he had on that 
of the law. (22 Ga. Bar Rep., 143, 148). 

In connection with his legal and theological reading, he had 
made a profound study of metaphysics. He had read and was 
familiar with Hobbes, Locke, Sir William Hamilton, Kant and 
German Metaphysicians. But, unlike many metaphysicians, 
there was nothing obscure in his style. His essays are distin- 
guished by clearness. He discusses the abstract as though it 
were the concrete, and in language so simple that the reader is 
both interested in the topic and charmed with the style. 

This clarity of expression may possibly be due to the fact 
that, along with his study of metaphysics, he took a genuine 
pleasure in the study of the higher mathematics, and, like many 
other great judges, turned to them from legal investigations 
for relaxation of mind, but this relaxation was not mere pas- 
time; for, he had made mathematical investigations which he 



12 A MEMORIAL OF 

had carefully preserved and which those able to judge pro- 
nounced to be original and valuable, but unfortunately the 
manuscript was lost in a fire several years before his death, and 
at a time when his health would not admit of the labor of re- 
writing what had been burned. 

Judge Bleckley was not only a student of law, theology, 
metaphysics and mathematics, but he was a great reader of 
general literature, history, science, biography, travel, and, as 
illustrating the accuracy of his memory, and the thoroughness 
of his methods, one of the stories with which the bar was fa- 
miliar, ten or fifteen years ago, recounted a conversation between 
Judge Bleckley and a gentleman recently returned from Eu- 
rope in which they discussed the scenery as viewed from an inn 
on the side of one of the Alps, but disagreed as to the relative 
position of a glacier. After Judge Bleckley had convinced the 
returned traveller, the latter asked what year he went to Eu- 
rope and was amazed to find that his exact knowledge of the 
position of the glacier had been wholly derived from reading 
books of travel, in which Judge Bleckley had kept before him 
a map, and, as he read the descriptions, he marked the line of 
his mental travels on the map, receiving and retaining a most 
vivid mental photograph of what he had described. He read 
as one seeing. 

Along with his interest in these other subjects, Judge Bleck- 
ley was not only familiar with the works of the great poets, 
but he himself frequently courted the Muse. His poems, how- 
ever, were all intellectual ; they are wanting in passion and 
fervor and are confessedly poems of the head. They illustrate 
his extraordinary command of language, and some of them 
show a verbal skill and a mastery of rhyme, and of metre even 
the most irregular, that is really extraordinary. These poems 
were happily collected by Judge Akin and put in permanent 
form in a paper read before the Bar Association. 

We all recall Judge Bleckley's intense objection to the ir- 
relevant, and his frequent addresses as to the importance of the 
relevant. Ignoring, or disputing, that element in humor which 
is furnished by a sudden and striking relation between the ap- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 13 

parently unrelated, Judge Bleckley, strange to say, denied that 
there was any humor in any of his decisions, insisting that it 
was only the relevancy of what he said that was thought to be 
amusing. But whatever the source of his delicious and bub- 
bling wit, Chancellor Hill said that it was "continually spring- 
ing up in his driest decisions like a fountain leaping from saw- 
dust." (4 Greenbag, 72). Albert H. Russell, Esq. (15 Ga. 
Bar Reports, 244-283) prepared a delightful paper entitled 
"Wit and Wisdom of Judge Bleckley," which, in pamphlet 
form, has been called for by lawyers throughout Canada and 
the United States, and the Georgia judge has thus furnished 
the bar of the nation many a clincher to an argument. 

The foregoing estimate of Judge Bleckley's varied powers 
and attainments may sound like exaggeration to those who 
were strangers to his inner life and who judge only by the 
tangible evidence of public expression and printed volumes. It 
will be seen by those who knew him that there has been a 
studied repression, because of a realization that "one word of 
undeserved praise would be untrue to his character, and his 
memory." But enough has been said to outline faintly his re- 
markable powers — his amazing intellectual force. He was, in- 
deed, a genius, many-sided, with the powers, originality and 
occasional eccentricities of a genius. But to her greatest favor- 
ites, Nature gives not genius alone, but yokes it with passion 
for work, and, from that union, come those products of the 
brain that endure. 

Those decisions of Judge Bleckley which appear like crys- 
tals in clearness and so simple that a tyro may understand, were 
written, — not with ease and facility, but with travail and pain, — 
what he calls "pain of doubt, fatigue, despair." With a genius 
for law never excelled, he was yet the hardest worker, the most 
laborious student. Though he had conquered the physical 
frailties of youth, his incessant labors told on the great frame 
and again and again he broke down from overwork, although, 
on occasions, "he even hired help by the day's work at an ex- 
pense of more than half of his per diem." (4 Greenbag, 77). 
He literally burnt the midnight oil. He spared neither body 



14 A MEMORIAL OF 

nor mind, writing, revising, rewriting, and his great opinions 
bear the mark of his painstaking labors. (22 Ga. Bar Rep. 138.) 

Lord Campbell generally found material in his "Lives of 
the Chancellors" in what they had done and said in public life 
rather than what they did or said while on the Woolsack. But, 
in view of his constant complaint that most of his subjects were 
deficient in literary skill, with what pleasure he would have 
undertaken the life of a man like Judge Bleckley, whose opin- 
ions are the most quotable extant, and sparkle, not with occa- 
sional, but with continual sayings, — pithy, humorous, wise, pro- 
found, — couched in language so perfect that they charm both 
the layman and the lawyer. But Judge Bleckley's biography, 
even by Lord Campbell, would have to discuss the man and not 
his deeds. His life was almost entirely free from those inci- 
dents, or participation in remarkable events, which form the 
basis of most biographies. It is he himself that is interesting 
and not what he did. Even his work on the bench gets no ad- 
ventitious assistance from the subject of his opinions. There 
were no exciting questions which were submitted to the court 
during his incumbency. No great constitutional nor political 
issues came before him for decision. The current of judicial 
labors ran almost without a ripple, and his reputation was made 
by the excellence of e very-day work in deciding common, 
every-day legal issues. Even in this work, the simplicity of his 
style is calculated, at first blush, to cause an underestimate of 
his opinions. For, at last and above everything, Judge Bleck- 
ley's peculiar power was to make plain that which was confused 
and to make simple that which was difficult. 

The great labor that he performed was in mastering the 
case; in unravelling the confusion of names, dates, and in 
winnowing out the real issue; that having been done, he elimi- 
nated the irrelevant and he then discussed the single issue that 
had been left. 

His method was rarely disclosed, but he does give us an in- 
sight as to how this was done in a sentence in the Ellison case, 
where he said: "Having freed the Court from its own miscon- 
struction of the Code, we are now ready for a new and true 
construction. And to find it, is one of those difficult easy 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY .15 

things which so frequently present themselves in the law. When 
the right point of view is discovered, the problem is more than 
half solved" (87 Georgia, 706). But whatever the method, 
the result is that most of his decisions appear to be so simple 
and the results so self-evident that one almost instinctively in- 
quires as to how there ever could have been any question over 
so plain a matter, forgetting that the real work behind the 
scenes was in reducing the question to that obvious issue. In 
respect of his opinions, he cannot be better characterized than 
by language which he used of another (83 Ga., 825) : "His 
mind was a crystal ; it was as clear as a sunbeam. What he 
saw, he saw with a distinct vision and what he said, was said 
in clear, concise and elegant language." While he was essen- 
tially modern in his spirit, yet he uniformly sought the foun- 
tains and ancient ways of the law. There is, however, a no- 
ticeable lack of anything like pedantry in his opinions. There 
is no smell of the lamp. His constant effort was to seek what 
he somewhere calls the "justice of the justice" of the case; but 
never to the sacrifice of legal principles or of legal rights, and, 
for that reason, it was his habit always to trace back to one of 
the tried and received maxims of the law, even though he did 
not quote it. 

The solidity of Lord Coke's learning and reasoning give 
value and permanence to his work, but his quaintness has at- 
tracted many a reader who would otherwise have passed by the 
dry volumes, and so with Judge Bleckley's decisions. The 
pithy remark, the flash of humor, the quaint turn of phrase, 
have added an attractiveness to their otherwise solid strength, 
and made his opinions known and read far and wide. But his 
reputation does not rest upon his brilliant sentences ; they are 
but the flashes of his genius. His national reputation as a great 
judge rests upon the solidity of his learning, his profound 
knowledge of the law, and the value of his opinions contained 
in the Georgia Reports. Most of them are brief, all of them. 
he made to appear easy. Occasionally he did have before him 
a case which taxed even his own power of analysis and simpli- 
fication, and then he girded up his loins for an elaborate and 
conspicuously great opinion. He himself regarded the opinion 



16 A MEMORIAL OF 

in the Ellison case as his best work, and, next to that, he put 
Ewing vs. Shropshire, 80 Georgia, in which he uttered the last 
words over the remains of the Rule in Shelley's case. Kinne- 
brew vs. State, 80 Georgia, 241, is a model of severe logic. 
Alabama Railroad vs. Fulghum, 87 Ga., 263, is a conspicuous 
illustration of his power of condensation. 

Judge Bleckley verified the French maxim that the style is 
the man. His clearness is only equaled by the openness of his 
nature. He had the simplicity and frankness of a child, — a 
frankness that prompted him to admit a fault as soon as it was 
committed and ever afterwards. He loved the friends of his 
youth, was full of sentiment, and cherished the very certificate 
that admitted him to the bar, and the two volumes he read as a 
youthful student. And yet, deep as was the hold of sentiment 
on his nature, he knew that courts are not the proper place for 
feeling and emotion. In asserting this important truth, he pre- 
pared his paper on "Emotional Justice." (9 Ga. Bar Rep., 54) — 
one of the saddest, profoundest and wisest things ever written 
on a subject which naturally developed into a discussion of 
mob law and its striking concomitant, appeals to the emotion 
of juries. In this paper, Judge Bleckley gave a wonderful in- 
stance of his marvelous power of analysis. Nothing can be 
more difficult than to prove an axiom, discuss a truism, or to 
lay bare the foundations of the bed-rock. This he did with sus- 
tained power, and both proved and enforced that which seemed 
beyond proof. He says : "The influence of the mob waxes, 
while that of the jury wanes. The body which decides be- 
tween guilt and innocence ought to be the most influential, the 
most feared and respected of any in society. No organization 
in or out of the court house should be so terrible to evil-doers 
as a jury of twelve men. No mob, even if composed of first- 
class citizens, ought to compete with the jury for repute in in- 
flicting punishment on offenders. The jury alone should be 
conspicuous in the exercise of this high function in behalf of 
the public. ... I exhort and abjure all good citizens to co- 
operate with the executive and the judiciary in staying quickly 
that violent justice which is rife in our unhappy country. Chil- 
dren already born may live to see mobs mobbed; large mobs 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 17 

may execute smaller ones ; mobs of one race may rise up 
against mobs of another race ; mobs of bad men may become 
more numerous and more terrible than mobs of good men." 

No sketch of Judge Bleckley's life would be even passably 
correct which failed to call attention to his relations to the bar 
by whom he was loved and venerated. He was ever the hon- 
ored guest of the Bar Association, and no meeting was com- 
plete without his presence. In response to urgent invitations, 
he prepared for it many papers of permanent interest and value. 
These, with his stenographically reported oral addresses, and 
the ''Letter to Posterity" published in the "Greenbag," not only 
afford interesting biographical material, but will be of value to 
the future student of Georgia jurisprudence. That same stu- 
dent may find on the walls of the Supreme Court room in the 
State Capitol an excellent portrait of the Chief Justice, though 
he will not be able therefrom fully to appreciate the towering 
form, the powerful body, the immense brow, nor the deep- 
sunken eyes, indicative of the spirit of the poet, the mathemati- 
cian and the jurist all struggling for preeminence. In personal 
appearance, he was like a prophet of old, but his nature was too 
kind and his heart too gentle to rebuke, with any bitterness, the 
sins and frailties of his generation. From eleven years of age 
to eighty, he devoted himself to the study of the law — the 
youngest student in the State, attorney, reporter, justice, chief 
justice, he lived the Nestor of Georgia's bench and bar. He 
died March 6, 1907, and on his tomb might truthfully be in- 
scribed the epitaph over Macaulay, "His body lies buried here, 
but his name will live forever." 

Jno. L. Hopkins, Chairman. 

J. R. Lamar, 

Joel Branham, 

H. H. Perry. 

[The substance of the foregoing sketch was prepared for 
"Men of Mark in Georgia" by a member of the Committee. 
With the consent of the publisher, and at the request of the 
other members of the Committee, that sketch revised and some- 
what amplified was made the basis of the foregoing report.] 



PROCEEDINGS 

HAD IN 

THE SUPREME COURT OF GEORGIA 

IN MEMORY OF 

EX-CHIEF JUSTICE BLECKLEY. 



Reprinted from 128th Georgia Reports. 



IN MEMORIAM. 

Supreme Court of Georgia, July 3, 1907. 
Present all of the Justices. 

The committee appointed to prepare a memorial commemora- 
tive of the life and character of Logan E. Bleckley, deceased, 
formerly Chief Justice of this Court, submitted its report 
through Judge John L. Hopkins, its chairman. 

Addresses on behalf of the bar were made by Judge John S. 
Candler, Judge Joel Branham, and Mr. Z. D. Harrison, and pa- 
pers were read from Mr. Frank H. Miller and Col. I. E. Shumate. 

Response for the court was made by Associate Justice J. H. 
Lumpkin. 

The court directed that a page of the minutes be set apart, 
dedicated to the memory of the deceased; that the report of the 
committee, copies of the addresses made, and response of Justice 
Lumpkin for the court be filed and published in the 128th volume 
of Georgia Reports; and that copies thereof be furnished to the 
family of Judge Bleckley. 

At the conclusion of the reading of the response of the court 
the Chief Justice announced that, as a further mark of respect 
to the memory of the late Chief Justice Bleckley, the court would 
stand adjourned until nine o'clock of the next day. 



MEMORIAL OF HONORABLE LOGAN E. BLECKLEY. 

Report of Committee. 

To the Honorable the Supreme Court of Georgia. 

The Committee appointed to prepare and report a memorial 
commemorative of the life and character of Logan E. Bleckley, 
formerly Chief Justice of the Court, respectfully submit the fol- 
lowing report: 

Logan Edwin Bleckley, second son of James and Catherine 
Lutz Bleckley, was born near Clayton, Rabun County, Georgia, 
July 3, 1827. Both parents were natives of North Carolina. His 
father's blood was English and Irish combined; his mother's 
German. His father was a poor man. He was of strong intel- 
lect; was clerk of three courts: the Superior, Inferior and Ordi- 
nary, and was a sterling character. At eleven years of 
age Logan went into his father's office as an assistant. 
His relish for law came to him in that office, and at the 
age of seventeen he borrowed books and began the study. 
Before he was nineteen he was admitted to the bar. He 
had no instructor. He practiced in that county for two 
years, his income for the time being between thirty-five 
and fifty dollars per annum. In order to accumulate a fund 
that would enable him to locate elsewhere, he obtained employ- 
ment as bookkeeper in the State Railroad Office, at Atlanta, at a 
salary of forty to sixty-six dollars per month. In the fourth 
year of that employment he was appointed secretary to the Gov- 
ernor, at a salary of twelve hundred dollars. On a change of 
administration he retired from that office, and in March, 1852, 
he opened a law office in Atlanta and resumed the practice. In 
1853 he was elected solicitor-general for the Coweta circuit, the 
term being four years. He continued the practice until 1861. 
In that year he joined the Confederate army, but was discharged 
on account of extreme general debility. After his discharge he 



22 A MEMORIAL OF 

served the Confederacy in legal business in Atlanta. In 1864 
he was appointed Supreme Court Reporter. He reported the 
34th and 35th volumes, and resigned in 1867. He resumed the 
practice and pursued it until 1875, when he was appointed As- 
sociate Justice of the Supreme Court. That office he held until 
the September term, 1879, when he resigned. In 1887 he was 
appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which office he 
held until he resigned in 1894. During the remainder of his 
life he lived in comparative retirement, doing occasional legal 
work for lawyers or others, who consulted him as an oracle of 
the law. He was married May 13th, 1857, at LaGrange, Geor- 
gia, to Miss Clara Caroline Haralson. Five children were born 
of that marriage. Mrs. Bleckley died March 9th, 1892. His 
second marriage was to Miss Chloe Herring. It occurred in 
New York City, August 2d, 1893. Five children were born of 
this marriage. 

Judge Bleckley was something over six feet tall. He wore 
his hair to his shoulders, and his beard to his breast. He dressed 
inexpensively, and had his garments made to suit himself re- 
gardless of fashion. His commanding form and noble presence 
made him a noticeable figure. In all the rounds of his life, pri- 
vately, publicly, everywhere, he was at all times distinctively 
Logan E. Bleckley. The purity of his life and the gentleness of 
his nature, were in his face. He died at Clarksville, Georgia, 
on Wednesday, March 6th, 1907. His body was brought to 
Atlanta and taken to the residence of his son-in-law, Hubert L. 
Culberson, Esq. On Thursday morning it was placed in the 
center of the Capitol rotunda. A guard of honor, composed of 
a committee appointed by the Atlanta Bar Association, kept vigil 
over the remains as they lay in state. At 3 :15 o'clock the remains 
were carried to the Supreme Court room, where the funeral 
rites were held, conducted by Rev. J. W. Lee, pastor of Trinity 
Church. The ceremony being over, the body was taken to Oak- 
land Cemetery and placed in the family lot. The entire pro- 
ceeding was conducted with great simplicity. There was no 
display. When the death occurred the news was flashed over 
the State, and everywhere it was received with expressions of 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 23 

profound sorrow. The Supreme, superior and city courts 
throughout the State adjourned. The State of Georgia went 
into mourning, closed its offices and put its flag at half-mast. 
The honorary escort was composed, perhaps, of a greater num- 
ber of distinguished men than had ever before followed a Geor- 
gian to his grave. From every quarter of the State men of all 
classes came to pay respect to his memory. There was one 
thing that was most noticeable. It was the solemn silence that 
everywhere prevailed. Men felt — they did not talk. It was si- 
lence that was born of deep respect and love. Such respect and 
love as do not find expression in the blare of trumpet, or the 
roar of cannon. In the respect that was shown there was a 
depth and genuineness which can never be forgotten. The si- 
lence v/as a voiceless expression of the conviction that the State 
had never lost a better man. 

In view of this unparalleled manifestation of esteem, we are 
impelled to inquire, what manner of man was he? What was 
there in his character, his life, which called forth this wonderful 
tribute to his memory? Whatever it was, it should be known, 
for certainly it w r as, and must continue to be, worthy of emulation. 

We make no apology for departing from beaten paths in 
shaping this report. 

The Chairman of this Committee makes this statement: "For 
more than forty years I was on terms of close friendship with 
Judge Bleckley. The relation was an intimate one. The inter- 
change of thought between us was unreserved. During all 
those years I never heard him utter an ignoble or ungenerous 
sentiment. I never heard him express ill feeling toward any 
human being. I never heard him use a word which might 
not, with propriety, have been spoken in any presence." Each 
member of the committee gives testimony similar in character, 
with varying terms of acquaintance. Each member knew him 
well, and was on terms of friendship with him. We are confi- 
dent that all who knew him would corroborate this testimony. 
He was certainly a gentleman of the loftiest type. 

We do not believe that any man can say truthfully that Judge 
Bleckley ever looked upon him in unkindness. Animosity was 



24 A MEMORIAL OF 

a stranger to him — that element was not in his character. In 
the year 1847, he being in his twentieth year, he was in the 
town of Clayton, on his way to Milledgeville to seek employ- 
ment at the then approaching session of the legislature. In 
Clayton he saw a woman who was held a prisoner by the sheriff. 
Her offense was that she owed a debt which she had not paid 
because she could not. She was exposed to public gaze, and 
was about to pass into the debtor's prison. Some generous 
gentlemen paid the debt for her, and she was discharged and 
went her way. Young Bleckley had been licensed, the year be- 
fore, to practice law. After reaching Milledgeville he prepared 
an act abolishing the imprisonment of women for debt. It was 
introduced and became a law. It was a great step in the ascent 
of a people's life. That act of his was deeply prophetic of the 
life he was to live, and did live. We are warranted in saying, 
that, from that day to the day of his death, there never was an 
hour when his great heart was not full of sympathy for his 
fellowman. If at that time the curtain had dropped upon his 
life, and no more had been known of him, still, as the person 
who took the initiative in abolishing the imprisonment of women 
for debt, his name should have been held in everlasting 
remembrance. 

Where principle was involved he was uncompromising. He 
made no concession to error. There was no such thing in him 
as a conscious, voluntary compliance with wrong. In standing 
by what was right, he could rise to as grand a moral height as 
any man. His intellectual life was candid. His mind was an 
honest one, and it was fixed habit with him to present a fair 
mental attitude to everything. He thought for himself, and in 
doing that he never lost sight of the importance of dealing 
honestly with himself. He accepted no opinion merely because 
it was current. He was not in any respect the slave of conven- 
tional opinion or practice. He did not blindly follow anything 
or anybody. His dominant purpose was to follow the truth and 
do right, not by paroxysms, but always. His love of truth gave 
a sublime rhythm to his life. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 25 

He did not follow truth as he saw it reflected in what people 
said or did. His standard was a higher one; and if ever man 
was true to a high standard, he was. He lived to exalt life — 
not to debase it. To his conception of right and wrong he re- 
ferred everything. Necessities, emergencies, had nothing to do 
with it. He was just and honest to the core, and whatever the 
matter was it had to stand or fall according to merit or demerit. 
Justice, the foundation of all law, he styled "the pontifical vir- 
tue." His sense of justice was not merely academic — intellec- 
tual, it was a governing motive, a controlling element of life, 
and with him it never stood aside for anything, not even self- 
interest. Prior to the year 1861, he collected seventy-five dol- 
lars for a client, who disappeared and the money was never 
called for. Forty years afterward, he directed in his will that 
that should be treated as a just debt and paid. The lapse of 
time had made a legal assertion of any claim impossible, but 
the lapse of time had nothing to do with his sense of justice. 
Mere materialism had no place in his life. 

Proof of his merit, and of the public confidence that was 
reposed in him, may be found in the fact that he held office for 
nearly one-third of his lifetime, although he knew no more 
about the ways of an office seeker than did a little child. "Elec- 
tioneering" was truly an occult science with him. 

As a practitioner his cardinal rules of action were observed. 
He held to the principle that a right could not exist in a client 
to have him knowingly do anything wrong. His uprightness 
never was called in question. 

As a counselor he was one of the safest. He went to the 
study of the law to find out what was true law, and not to get 
something to be used in support of the necessities of a case. His 
arguments were strong, logical, impressive, but he was not what 
is called a "popular orator." He did not have that element 
which sometimes, innocently enough, stirs the emotions, until 
juries are swept off their feet to the doing of injustice. He 
practiced on a plane where reason prevailed, and where there 
certainly was no purpose to drive it from its throne. The first 



26 A MEMORIAL OF 

place at the Georgia bar was accorded to him, as a matter of 
right, by the profession. 

Such a character as we have described could make but one 
kind of a judge, and Judge Bleckley was of that kind. In the 
judicial office to have been dull of intellect, shallow of learning, 
unjust, acrimonious, impatient or unkind, would have been con- 
trary to his moral makeup, and to the course of his whole life. 
The character thus formed was simply projected into the judge- 
ship, and at the instant of judicial birth he stood a fully equip- 
ped, ready-made judge. No change in thought, manner, or 
principle of action, was needed to adapt the man to the office. 
The result was, what is so well known, that there is no judicial 
work superior to his. This statement is a broad one, but it is 
deliberately made, and we rely on the record for proof of its 
truth. 

In the year 1892 there was doubt as to whether Judge Bleck- 
ley wished to remain on the bench, and a letter was addressed 
to him asking him to allow it to be announced that he was a can- 
didate for re-election. That letter was signed by 139 lawyers 
from different parts of the State, and no doubt would have been 
signed by every lawyer in the State if opportunity had been 
offered. In it this paragraph occurred : "For many years we 
have given much study and scrutiny to your work as one of the 
judges of the highest judicial tribunal of this State. That work 
furnished proof of your patience, industry, intellectual grasp 
and clearness, and of your devotion to truth and justice, to a 
degree rarely in any judge equaled, and by none excelled." That 
was the estimate of his work by the profession at that time. 
That it was just cannot be doubted. It was confirmed by sub- 
sequent service, and time has but served to strengthen the opin- 
ion that now prevails, which is, that there is not to be found 
anywhere finer judicial work. 

As to style, his opinions "are terse, crispy, graceful, anima- 
ted and entertaining." Indeed, we know of no legal literature 
that is more entertaining or instructive. His thoughts are 
clothed in plain, simple, yet well-chosen English. The expres- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 27 

sion is always felicitous. There is affluence of thought, and 
imagery, but no verbal finery. "Intellectual grasp and clearness" 
and "devotion to truth and justice" appear on every page, and 
furnish incontestable evidence of his goodness and his greatness. 
His judicial work will not fail with the passing of the years. It 
will link his name in honor with the history of the State for all 
coming time. 

He resigned as Supreme Court Reporter in order to give his 
undivided time to the practice. He resigned as Chief Justice 
because the business of the Court had become too heavy to be 
adequately handled by three Judges. It was a mental and phy- 
sical impossibility. The people had twice rejected proposed 
amendments to the constitution increasing the number to five 
Justices. His resignation settled the matter, and the number 
was promptly increased to six Justices. 

In 1879 he resigned as Associate Justice of the Supreme 
Court because he was an overworked man. He had reached a 
state of physical exhaustion. With him industry was a cardinal 
virtue, and he was one of the most industrious of men. He be- 
lieved that work was essential to happiness, and yet he was com- 
pelled to put it aside in order to save his life. In moments of 
leisure he had written some exquisite little poems, and on this 
occasion he read from the bench what he styled a "judicial 
poem." It was spread upon the minutes of the court, and we 
reproduce it. It is well worthy of preservation for its beauty, 
and also for the lesson it teaches. As he was then turning away 
from "the bliss of toil," there is much of sadness to be read be- 
tween the lines : 

In the Matter of Rest. 

Rest for hand and brow and breast, 

For fingers, heart, and brain! 
Rest and peace ! a long release 

From labor and from pain ; 
Pain of doubt, fatigue, despair — 

Pain of darkness everywhere, 
And seeking light in vain. 



28 A MEMORIAL OF 

Peace and rest ! are they the best 

For mortals here below? 
Is soft repose from work and woes 

A bliss for men to know? 
Bliss of time is bliss of toil; 

No bliss but this, from sun and soil, 
Does God permit to grow? 

Great intellectuality, love of justice, deep learning, simplicity, 
integrity, unfailing kindness and gentleness, combined to call 
forth the wonderful expression of respect of which we have 
spoken. In last analysis, the hope of progress in good among 
men lies in individual excellence. Purity of the individual points 
the upward way to a people, and the lesson taught by right liv- 
ing rises above all other teaching. That lesson Judge Bleckley 
taught. 

Mairy centuries ago a w T ise man said: "By two wings a man 
is lifted up from things earthly, namely, by simplicity and pu- 
rity. Simplicity doth tend towards God, purity doth apprehend 
and taste him." Without reference to dogma or formulated 
faith, we can not doubt that the good and great man of whom 
we write will share in whatever reward there may remain for the 
pure in heart, who, in all truth and fidelity, have trod the weary 
way of human life. 

In the year 1892 Judge Bleckley wrote: "The favorable 
opinion of the bar, that grand tribunal to which every judge is 
accountable, is precious to me in a degree which no words can 
measure or express." And now, we, as representatives of the 
bar he loved so well, offer this memorial of his life and charac- 
ter, that it may be placed upon the records of the high tribunal 
of which he was once so distinguished and brilliant an ornament. 

John L. Hopkins, Chairman. 

Spencer R. Atkinson. George W. Stevens. 

Samuel B. Adams. Henry C. Peeples. 

Joseph R. Lamar, Albert H. Russell. 

Z. D. Harrison. Robert McMillan. 

John M. Graham. W. L. Grice. 

John W. Akin. W. M. Hammond. 

W. P. Price. Peter W. Meldrim. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 29 

Joel Branham. Leon A. Wilson. 

Frank H. Miller. I. E. Shumate. 

John I. Hall. W. D. Kiddoo. 

J. H. Merrill. Isaac Hardeman. 

Henry R. Goetchius. Joseph W. Bennett. 

Wm. A. Little. H. D. McDaniel. 

John S. Candler. T. B. Cabaniss. 

John C. Hart. R. L. Gamble. 



Address of Judge John S. Candler. 

May it please your Honors, — I fear that to attempt to add 
one word to the report of your Committee, as prepared and pre- 
sented by its chairman, himself the life-long friend and associate 
of our great Chief Justice, may be considered of doubtful pro- 
priety ; but from my childhood I was taught to love, honor and 
respect the names of Hiram Warner and Logan E. Bleckley, 
and to look upon their lives as representative of all that was 
best and greatest among Georgia's great judges and able law- 
yers. My father died when I was a child, but my sainted mother 
kept up the lessons that my father had begun; and to-day, upon 
the anniversary of her death, I wish to testify that to these lives 
and characters, as I was directed to study them, and to love 
them, I owe much of whatever success I may have had in my 
life as a lawyer and a judge; and if I have done any good for 
my fellow-man, much of my inspiration has come from them. 

At this time, and at this particular hour, we may, with great 
benefit to ourselves, consider the leading elements in the character 
of the one whose recent departure from this life we mourn. Prob- 
ably the most striking and conspicuous trait in the character of 
Judge Bleckley, and the one which most surely and distinctly 
marked him out among his fellow-men, and placed him upon 
that pedestal which has been erected for him in the hearts of 
those who knew and loved him, was his unswerving fidelity to 
his ideals of right. Even as he made the search for truth the 
sole object of his judicial labors, so, in his private life, the only 
question that ever determined his course of action in doubtful 



30 A MEMORIAL OF 

matters was, what is right? Once that question was answered 
in his mind, all other considerations were brushed aside, and 
questions of expediency or policy were eliminated as unworthy 
of the great mind of the man. 

Theoretically, he shared this trait with the majority of men, 
for nearly all of us want to be guided only by the good and 
true ; — it was the practice of the theory, the ability to see and 
the courage to do the right, regardless of all conflicting consid- 
erations, that made of Judge Bleckley a man among men. This 
trait in his character sometimes led to unexpected and appar- 
ently paradoxical situations. By nature, gentle and urbane ; 
having a heart big enough to embrace all humanity in its ten- 
derness and love ; preferring to speak good of all men rather 
than evil, there were yet times when a righteous rage possessed 
him, and the dove became a lion. It was easy to impose upon 
the gentle, good nature of Judge Bleckley, but it was never pos- 
sible to impose upon his sense of right and wrong, and there are 
those to-day who can bear witness to the fact that when the lion 
within him was aroused the object of his anger was always made 
to feel the blow which only a strong man and a good man can 
deliver. But his wrath was against the wrong and not the 
wrong-doer; and when its object had been achieved, the serene 
calm, of which only great minds are capable, again possessed 
him, and he was once more the loving friend whose hand was 
always extended to uplift and support. 

Old men loved and cherished him ; young men venerated 
him, and looked upon him as the wise patriarch, combining 
within himself the wisdom and the goodness of the years ; all men, 
young or old, who came within the sphere of his influence, ad- 
mired him as a great man among men, in all that goes to make 
true greatness of mind and heart. 

Out of the sorrow of his passing, the bench, the bar and the 
people of Georgia should take comfort in this thought: We 
should thank God, who raises up great men for great emergen- 
cies, that Georgia has had her Bleckley. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 31 



Address of Judge Joel Branham. 

May it please the Court, — Just a few words in addition to 
the report of the Committee, to link myself personally and inti- 
mately with the memory of this truly great and good man. The 
first time I ever saw Judge Bleckley was in Macon, Georgia, 
forty-three years ago. I met him there at that time, as my legal 
adversary, in the Supreme Court, held in the old Bibb County 
court-house, in the consolidated cases of Daly & Fitzgerald vs. 
Harris, and Harwell vs. Cohen. He was the victor. He was a 
young man in the vigor of life. He made the opening argu- 
ment, I remember it well. It was in writing. He read it to the 
court with diffidence and some apparent embarrassment, and at 
its conclusion excused himself in order to return to Atlanta to 
meet another business engagement there. I remember also the 
forceful and classical character of that argument, and the high 
commendation of it made by the members of the court, as they 
came down from the bench, and by the members of the bar 
present at the time. Toil was the law of his life, and the two 
great commandments the basis of his religion. He loved the 
truth in all matters secular and religious. In his search for it 
his anxiety was to satisfy his own mind and then to express his 
views and opinions in fitting and exact words. He gave more 
weight to reason than to precedents. His method of composi- 
tion was careful and laborious. On one occasion he said, "No 
thoughts I ever had were much until they were revised. It is 
characteristic of my mind that it produces its products in frag- 
ments, and anything that is of considerable length that I say, 
whether with the tongue or pen, consists of an assemblage of frag- 
ments at first, and, in order to connect them properly and give 
them uniformity of appearance, and sometimes of unity, I have 
to revise and then revise the revision." 

He dealt with his thoughts as one capturing a nest of wild 
birds; he was unwilling to turn them loose until they were full- 
fledged and strong, and their plumage radiant with beaut}- : then 
only did he set them free, that they might go unerringly on their, 
mission. 



32 A MEMORIAL OF 

In the 78th year of his age he said, "Nearly all religion, so 
far as I know, has more or less dogma in it. There is no credi- 
ble religion because it is above reason. Atheism fails because it 
offers nothing to supply the place of faith in God. I am coming 
to the time when I have got to face some religion. I have got 
to die by it." He was not content to see through a glass darkly 
by faith alone. He longed to pierce the veil. He was unwilling 
to wait, impatient to know. Confined, circumscribed, and lim- 
ited by earthly bonds, while "still in this plodding sad pilgrim- 
age," this pathetic drift between the eternities, like a dreamer 
enthralled by sleep who struggles with all his might to move 
an arm or raise an eyelid, his great soul labored to know the un- 
known. He could only say, "I know I do not know." May we 
not hope that in the full liberty of a disembodied soul he now 
sees face to face and knows even as he is also known? 



Address by Mr. Frank H. Miller. 

There is so much to be said of this wonderful man that, as a 
member of the Committee, I shall confine myself mainly to my 
personal recollections. 

Mustered out of active service I was employed as Assistant 
to the Confederate States District Attorney, and as my duty 
frequently called me to the Supreme Court, there, in 1864, 1 
met the new Reporter, Mr. Bleckley, who aided me greatly with 
advice and assistance. It was a case of "love at first sight," 
which grew through years into profound admiration, regard, 
and respect. After he resigned his position as Reporter in 1867, 
I failed to see much of him until he was appointed Associate 
Justice of the Supreme Court in 1875. It was then that his pro- 
found learning, patient industry, and untiring perseverance be- 
came well known to me, and was noised abroad. 

In those days I generally spent the summer months with my 
family on the coast of Maine. There I met many of the most 
distinguished Canadian judges and barristers, from Montreal 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 

and elsewhere, and in conversation with them learned how 
greatly he was admired. Each and all expressed to me their ad- 
miration of his learning, his originality, his genius, his con- 
ciseness, and with all his tenderness. 

Later, when in response to the universal demand he returned 
to the bench, he added to all his other qualities a paternal man- 
ner and solicitude as to the personnel of the bar, and was lov- 
ingly called by the younger attorneys "the old Chief." He would 
sit and discuss with us things that were the subject-matter of 
interest at the time. As an instance I recall his views as to 
serial navigation, then under consideration by the Army and 
Navy authorities, as to what form protection should assume 
against such attacks, then prominent from the publication of a 
book known as "Caesar's Column," undertaking to predict as to 
warfare in the future from and in the clouds. I was much im- 
pressed by what he said, and never have forgotten it. It was 
substantially to the effect that so long as man was unable to 
navigate the air at will he could and would be controlled, and 
there would be law and order on the face of the earth; but if 
ever he was successful in navigating the air, go whither he 
would, with vessels of sufficient tonnage to carry war supplies, 
he could not and would not be controlled, and the world would 
become pandemonium. 

Nothing is more often referred to in the books than Judge 
Bleckley's famous apothegm, "There are many cardinal virtues, 
but justice is the pontifical virtue." This he lived up to in all 
his relations in life, as a man, and in his judicial administration, 
day by day. As evidence of his conscientious discharge of his 
duty, I recall one occasion when attending the Supreme Court 
that I found him stretched upon a cot, beside the bench, in the 
court-room. On this cot he had laid for days, a sufferer from 
acute sciatica, but still hearing the causes as they were argued. 
I happened to have with me the remedy of a famous physician, 
which I promptly tendered, and which aided materially in re- 
lieving him and enabling him to resume his seat on the bench. 

Judge Bleckley never knew how to spare himself. The con- 



34 A MEMORIAL OF 

stant application, careful preparation, close attention which he 
gave, simply exhausted his nervous energy; and after twelve 
years' service he was forced unwillingly to leave the bench and 
retire for rest to the mountainous climate of Rabun and Hab- 
ersham counties. 

I had the honor once to have the Judge as a client. I had 
been of counsel in the administration of the estate of his wife's 
father. Financial misfortune had come to one of Mrs. Bleck- 
ley's investments of mill stock, which she had inherited, and, 
with the Judge, I sought to save it. It was about the success 
which finally attended, and was about to be realized, that I re- 
ceived his last message. 

I never knew what a tender spot was in his heart for me 
and others until I was shown a letter he had written to Major 
Cumming, after he had retired from the bench, in which he said : 
"Allow me to mention what I often deplore, the restriction of 
my intercourse with many whom I most esteem and admire. 
Three such men besides yourself belong to Augusta — indeed 
four such: Miller, Fleming, Black, and Lamar. One of my 
standing regrets is that I must leave the world without seeing 
of these a tithe as much as would be pleasant and profitable to 
me. I pity myself for being excluded most of the time from 
such company, but solitude has a beneficence of its own, and I 
am highly blest in many respects; so, on the whole, I am reas- 
onably content." 

As a philosopher and seeker after truth he was unequaled. 
In his death we must bow to the inevitable, thankful to Provi- 
dence for having been permitted to live in his generation. Of 
him we can say, just as he did of Judge Benning: 

"In peace it was his lot to die; 

In peace, O may his ashes lie ! 

And sweetest peace, while ages roll, 

Attend his noble, manly soul !" 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 

Address by Mr. Z. D. Harrison. 

May it please your Honors, — Such an opportunity to pay 
tribute to the memory of Judge Bleckley should not be lost by 
one who truly loved him, and for whom he so often manifested 
kindliest regard. 

All that has been said in the report of your committee has 
been so well said that I dare not venture to speak of the char- 
acteristics there described. But no mention of the religious 
side of the life of Judge Bleckley is made in that report, nor in 
either of the addresses to which we have listened, except in the 
brief reference made by Judge Branham. To my mind it is 
impossible for such a lover of truth and justice as is portrayed 
in the report and in those addresses to be irreligious. Judge 
Bleckley loved nature, and he believed in nature's God. He 
praised the works of the Lord and worshipped him. How truly 
he praised and worshipped could be known only by those who 
had opportunity, such as I once had, to witness his rapture and 
delight as he stood on the cliff of a high mountain, viewing the 
works of the Lord, while his great spirit seemed to commune 
with his God, and to strive, in the language of your committee's 
report, to "apprehend and taste him." Judge Bleckley's relig- 
ion was not superstition, it was faith. Hear it declared in his 
own words: 

FAITH. 

Cast out into space 

For life and for death; 
No ultimate base, 

No bottom beneath, 
No limit or bound 

Above or around, 
No wall at the side 

Or roof overhead, 
No cover to hide 

Me, living or dead, 
No refuge for thought or for sense: 
Yet I will not despair 



36 A MEMORIAL OF 



As I drift through the air, 

Afloat in the boundless immense; 
In the depth of the night 

Cometh faith without light, 
Cometh faith Avithout sight, 

And I trust the great Sovereign unknown; 
No finite or definite throne, 

But the infinite, nameless, unthinkable One. 



Address by Col. I. E. Shumate. 

May it please the Court, — For more than a quarter of a 
century, my relations with the distinguished Judge whose char- 
acter we commemorate were delightfully cordial — may I not 
say mutually affectionate? I esteem it a privilege to add a few 
paragraphs commemorative of my distinguished friend. 

A number of years ago I read a description of the "Legal 
Mind," which impressed itself so indelibly upon my memory 
that I can recall it substantially, in part at least: It is more 
than a reservoir in which to store fragments of so-called legal 
lore ; it is something more than an index of cases ; something 
more than a filing case in which to pigeon-hole court records; 
something more than a digest of the decisions of the Supreme 
Court of a particular jurisdiction. A man may be familiar with 
the statutes; familiar with the best forms of pleading; familiar 
with precedents, and yet know but little law. Law is not always 
the latest dictum of a court of last resort; an able lawyer may 
sometimes prevail upon the highest tribunal to change its decis- 
ion, or upon mature deliberation the court itself may reverse or 
modify its decision. Law is the principle which must pre- 
vail, if justice is to prevail. He is a great lawyer who, 
in the light of great learning bearing directly or incident- 
ally upon a matter at issue, clearly perceives the prin- 
ciple which controls it, and luminously presents and logically 
applies that principle. Tested by this definition, or de- 
scription of the "Legal Mind/' it can not be doubted that Judge 
Bleckley's was a legal mind of high order. A study of his dis- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 37 

cussion upon the law in his Revised Thoughts, read before the 
Georgia Bar Association at its meeting in 1905, will disclose a 
close resemblance between his conception of the law and the 
lawyer, and that embodied in the description I have attempted 
to give. When a young man I was concerned in a complicated 
case involving various difficulties, then pending in this court. 
In the division of labor among the members of the court, then 
but three, that case fell to Judge Bleckley. He did not hand 
down his decision during the term at which the case was argued, 
but held it over until the following term. During the vacation 
I chanced to meet him and ventured to ask, "Have you reached 
a decision of that case?" calling it by its title. He went into a 
statement of the difficulties involved, and said that he had de- 
voted considerable time to thinking upon the case, but had failed 
to reach a satisfactory conclusion ; that he had laid it aside and 
dismissed it from his mind for the present, but after a while 
he would take it up from a new point of departure and see if 
he could not discover the justice of the case. This is illustrative 
of his judicial method with difficult cases. 

Not every legal mind is a judicial mind. We have all seen 
successful and even brilliant lawyers who were comparative 
failures when promoted to the bench ; and we have seen law- 
yers of moderate ability and limited learning make creditable 
records as judges. Judge Bleckley was an eminent judge as 
well as a great lawyer. I do not err when I say that his was a 
legal mind of high order cast in a judicial mold. 

It would be incorrect to say that important principles of law 
are always discovered and molded in the heat of discussion at 
the bar; and that the bench merely selects between conflicting 
theories and frames the theory selected in judicial form and 
phrase. Many recondite and controlling principles have been 
discovered and wrought out by the judges, often by a single 
judge, with but little reference to the contentions of opposing 
counsel. Judge Bleckley delighted to build upon bedrock. 

His equipment for an ideal judge and lawyer was admira- 
ble. Richly endowed by nature, his powers were thoroughly dis- 
ciplined. It would be exaggeration to say that his knowledge 



38 A MEMORIAL OF 

was encyclopaedic; yet his learning, legal and general, took a 
wide range and was remarkably accurate. There was scarcely 
a suggestion of eloquence in his spoken style; yet his clear, terse 
English, his analytical and incisive methods, and his faculty for 
apt and forceful illustration gave to his written page a striking 
individuality of style, which is distinctly impressed upon every 
page of his writings, whether in law-books or in literary produc- 
tions. Added to this was a commanding character, integrity ab- 
solutely inflexible, a well-tempered judicial temperament, and a 
most agreeable and winsome personality — personal magnetism, 
if you please, which attracted to him scores of choice friends 
from every walk of life. These he "grappled unto his soul with 
hooks of steel." 

Judge Bleckley said of his own mind, "that it produced its 
products in fragments, and that in order to connect them and 
give them unity of substance, he had to consider and re- 
consider, revise and re-revise them." May not this mental habit 
(if not necessity) explain in large degree his great fondness for 
retiring from the thronged thoroughfares and bustling life of 
the city to the quiet and romantic scenes of his mountain home? 
Was not this a favorite resort for the evolution of some princi- 
ple, or the development of some theory, by which to solve more 
satisfactorily grave questions of law, or of religion, or of states- 
manship, or of science, held in his mind for solution? 

Not long since, in conversation with a clergyman, I read to 
him this from the Judge: "Religion, as I understand it, and 
that religion you can rest on and be safe in standing by to the 
last, may be defined as the essential relation between man and 
his Creator." Said I, "The Judge had faith in the source of his 
being ; and sought to be in right relation with that source.' 7 This, 
too, I read: "If you have faith that whatever is is right, and 
can be depended on to take you out of the world as well as to 
bring you into it, your hope may be equally broad with your 
faith." And this also: 

"And I trust the great Sovereign unknown; 
No finite or definite throne, 
But the Infinite, nameless, unthinkable One." 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 39 

I asked : "What do you think of that ?" My friend answered : 
"Too indefinite — too intangible — lacks some essential elements 
of faith." I replied: "In what does his conception of Deity dif- 
fer from this, which I have heard learned theologians use in their 
invocations ? 

"O Thou eternal One, whose presence bright 
All space doth occupy, all motion guide. 



"Whom none can comprehend, none explore, 
Who fill'st existence with thyself alone, 
Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er, 

Being whom we call God and know no more." 

His simple (shall I say sublime?) faith challenges the respect 
of thoughtful minds of whatever creed or church. I venture to 
ask, was any faith, different from this in kind, possible to a mind 
so keenly analytical, so severely logical, and as sincere as sunlight ? 

A remarkable incident occurred during the argument of the 
Dartmouth College case in the United States Supreme Court. 
Mr. Webster, in speaking of his Alma Mater, threw such emo- 
tional energy into a few sentences as to visibly affect the learned 
Chief Justice Marshall. In the July number of Munsey's Maga- 
zine, a writer says of this incident: "Never before and never 
since has the spectacle been seen of a great and stern Chief Jus- 
tice of the United States bending forward with tears welling to 
his eyes, while he listened to a legal discussion." 

Often have we seen the tears welling to Judge Bleckley's 
eyes — another illustrious example of a great intellect and a 
great, tender heart harmoniously blended in the same great per- 
sonality. 

These two strong men were patrons of the drama, especially 
when one of Shakespeare's masterpieces was on the boards and 
a star actor held the stage. I have heard Judge Bleckley criti- 
cise an actor thus : "He broke the force of the thought by a mis- 
placed emphasis — he marred the beauty and changed the sense 
of this line by a false punctuation," — himself repeating the line 
correctly. 



40 A MEMORIAL OF 

Senator George Graham Vest, who had often thrilled the 
United States Senate by his eloquence, a short time before his 
death, when exceedingly feeble, and when the silver trumpet was 
muffled under the shore, produced a most respectful silence in 
that august body by repeating Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar." 
Before reading an account of that impressive incident, I had not 
read, or so much as heard of that beautiful poem. Since then I 
have run it through my mind a hundred times. It does not grow 
old. Frequently when I have thought of Judge Bleckley's poetic 
temperament and of his poetic genius ; when I have thought of 
his unique religious creed, and of his implicit, yet anxious and 
questioning faith, this beautiful poem has recurred to my mind 
as being appropriate to our friend when about to put out to sea : 

"Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell when I embark; 
For though from out our bourne of time and place the flood may bear 

me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face when I have crossed the bar." 



MR. JUSTICE LUMPKIN RESPONDED FOR THE 
COURT, AS FOLLOWS : 

Some of the friends present may have known Judge Bleckley 
longer than I. None, I think, admired and loved him more than I. 
For over thirty years I knew him. It was my good fortune to 
serve this court first as assistant reporter, and then as reporter, 
while he was on the bench. And I deem it a privilege on behalf 
of the Court to add a few words to what has already been said. 

To think of the great man, whom but yesterday we all saw 
and loved, as dead, seems strange indeed. That the form we 
knew so well will move among us no more ; that the wondrous 
brain which grappled with the profoundest problems of law, of 
thought, of life, has fallen asleep ; that the great heart has ceased 
to beat; that the tireless hands, always ready to take up life's 
burdens and duties, are folded forever on the breast of peace, 
seems passing strange. And yet, he himself did not look upon 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 41 

death as a disaster or an unmixed evil. It was Nature's call to 
her children to come home to rest, in Nature's own good time. 
He believed that 

"The something that ought to befall 
Will happen at last unto all." 

Indeed, when he looked at life, with its cares, its mixture of 
joy and sorrow, its hopes and disappointments, its unsatisfied 
longings, its endless strivings, and the cost of it all, and com- 
pared it with the peacefulness of death, he said: 

"How costly is life, what countless expense, 
To temper the blood and comfort the sense, 
And nourish the mind and chasten the breast, 
And keep the heart ruled in its stormy unrest ; 
But death unto all is offered so cheap ; 
There's nothing to pay for falling asleep, 
Save closing the eyes and ceasing to weep." 

Death was to him not only inevitable, not only natural, but it 
was also a part of the plan of infinite wisdom, and that plan 
must be good. He said : 

"Nor at this should we murmur, or sigh, or repine ; 

Man's weakness, as well as his strength, is divine ; 
The day is no better bestowed than the night, 

And darkness is precious, as well as the light." 

And thus when his work was done, esteemed, loved and hon- 
ored, he lay down beside the rugged pathway of life ; and it being- 
evening, he fell asleep. 

On his eightieth birthda3 T , we come to pay some tribute to his 
memory, to place in the official reports, which he dignified with his 
learning, and illumined with his utterance, a permanent memo- 
rial of his greatness and his worth ; and then to separate, bearing 
in each breast a sense of loss which words can not adequately ex- 
press. But no monument of bronze or marble, no written words 
of ours, though earnestly and lovingly penned, will be his most 



42 A MEMORIAL OF 

permanent memorial. His real monument he builded himself. 
It is in the Reports of the Supreme Court of this State. His 
real memorial will not be inscribed on written page or chiseled 
on dull, cold marble, but it is written deep in loving memory in 
the hearts of the bar and people of Georgia. 

Born amid the mountain scenes of Rabun County, he was 
imbued with something of the lofty views and far visions of the 
peaks that raised themselves toward heaven. And yet he loved 
the valleys too, the fields, the woods, the winding streams. I 
have sometimes thought that his love of nature was not merely 
of its inanimate beauty, but that he saw in it a deeper, subtler 
meaning, a pervading power of the Infinite, and that he felt a 
kind of friendship and fellowship for mountain and valley, for 
wood and stream. As he has often been seen standing on some 
hilltop, gazing out into the infinite blue, and turning his face 
toward the rising or setting sun, it has tempted one to say of him : 

"The bush hath friends to meet him, 
And their kindly voices greet him 
In the murmur of the breezes and the rivers on their bars, 
He sees the vision splendid of the sunlit rays extended, 
And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars." 

The report of the committee has given so complete a bio- 
graphical sketch of Judge Bleckley that a repetition of it would 
be useless. I would emphasize only one or two of his character- 
istics. His intellect was great. His heart was tender and lov- 
ing. Like the structure of his native mountain home, the tow- 
ering peak of his intellect lifted itself toward the sky. But be- 
low lay the beauteous valley of the heart, where sweetest flowers 
of love and friendship bloomed. His industry was enormous. 
His memory was phenomenal. But if I should seek to select 
two characteristics which were more strikingly exemplified in 
him, I should say, first, the purity and guilelessness of his soul ; 
and second, and allied to it, his love of truth. Truth at the bar, 
truth in emotion, truth in action! Truth to him was priceless. 
Let it cost what it would, he would stand by the truth. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 43 

It has been said that "art is the joy which a man has in his 
work." Measured by this standard, how great an artist was 
Judge Bleckley. Material gain and pecuniary rewards were of 
small importance to him. It was work well done in which he 
found delight. And thus it was that from the serene nobility 
of his soul in perfect candor he could say, " Service is better 
than salary, and duty more inspiring than reward." 

It seems to me that one of the best tests of a man's greatness 
is the effect he produces on those of a younger generation. The 
love of friends of our own age may overlook our faults ; but he 
is great indeed who leaves his impress for good on the lives of 
those who come after him. The young men loved Judge Bleckley, 
even those who knew him only when his face was turned to the 
west, his shadow fast lengthening toward the east. As it is 
written that Elijah, mounting upward on his blazing chariot 
wheels, did drop his mantle, which young Elisha caught up as 
it fell, oh may it be that the mantle of this great man may fall 
upon the shoulders of some young prophet who shall arise to 
point the way not merely to material wealth, but better far, to 
truth, to honor, to eternal right, for this our beloved Georgia! 

Poet, philosopher, jurist, friend, farewell! 

While others may tell of his fame and his work, this be my 
humble tribute to my much loved friend: When each year the 
sunshine warms to life the flowers of spring — coming in the 
morning to gladden the earth, or resting at eve on the moun- 
tains he loved — no sun ray will fall with purer light nor 
brighter flowers bloom above a truer breast than those that rest 
and blossom on the grave of Logan E. Bleckley. 

The court concurs in the high estimate and the sincere re- 
gard which has been expressed for our departed brother, both 
as a man and as a judge. His memory shall be cherished while 
the court exists. A page of the minutes will be set apart and 
dedicated to his memory, and the proceedings will be published 
in the Georgia Reports. Let a certified copy be furnished to 
his family. 



LOGAN E. BLECKLEY. 

Sketch taken from ''The Supreme Court of Georgia," an article by 

Walter B. Hill, then a member of the Macon Bar, 

published in The Green Bag, Boston, 

February, 1892. 



Reprinted by permission of S. R. Writtington, Esq., 
Editor The Green Bag. 



LOGAN E. BLECKLEY 

Chief Justice Bleckley is as tall as Bishop Brooks, and every 
inch is pure genius. It is natural with him to think, speak, and 
act in an unconventional way; but the thorough saneness of his 
character is attested by the fact that this marked individualism 
never passes into eccentricity. 

If I were asked to state in a word the most prominent char- 
acteristic of his mind, I should answer, provided I was first per- 
mitted to define the meaning of the word, Wit. I do not, of 
course, mean mere drollery, although that is continually spring- 
ing up in his dryest decisions, like a fountain leaping from a bed 
of sawdust and 

"Shaking its loosened silver in the sun." 

Sometimes the fun seems to be just for its own sake, as in a will 
case where one Potts was charged with making Cupid kin to 
cupidity by a mercenary marriage, he gravely asks, "Why may 
not a Potts marry for love?" Oftener pleasantry is used to ex- 
pose error: 

"A gentler death shall falsehood die, 
Shot through and through with cunning words." 

But it is not to these significations of wit that I refer. The defi- 
nition that I would give would be that striking epigram of 
George Eliot, "Wit is wisdom raised to a higher power." It is 
a curious fact that perfect clearness of thought and expression 
often affects the mind like wit. The style of the late Judge J. S. 
Black had this remarkable quality. It is present in all of Judge 
Bleckley's utterances, legal and literary. 

It is another form of illustrating the above definition to say 
that Judge Bleckley has a legal imagination. Lawyers whose 
practice has brought them before many courts, State and Fed- 



48 A MEMORIAL OF 

eral, say that they never saw his equal in "catching a case" from 
the opening statements. And they are often amazed when by a 
flash of legal insight he discloses views arising on the record 
which months of laborious study have never enabled them to see. 

In the selection of quotable extracts, the discussions of Judge 
Bleckley present an embarrassment of riches. The description 
of the lawyer who was cut off at twelve o'clock Saturday night 
with an undelivered speech has become familiar to the profes- 
sion, through Mr. Snyder's book, "Great Decisions by Great 
Judges." 

From a single volume of the Georgia reports nearly all the 
following have been culled : — 

In Harriman against First Bryan Baptist Church, which in- 
volved a breach of contract to furnish a steamboat for an excur- 
sion for the society, the Judge says : "A committeeman on board 
was threatened with a most profane form of immersion." 

In Kupperrnan against McGehee, he says : "Trusts are 
children of equity ; and in a court of equity they are at home, — 
under the family roof-tree, and around the hearth of their 
ancestor." 

In Nussbaum against Heilbron, a son carried on business in 
the name of his father, because he felt that his own name was 
under a mercantile cloud. As Judge Bleckley expresses it: 
"According to the charges of the bill, the father had no capital 
and the son no character. The man without character carried 
on the business in the name and upon the credit of the man 
without capital." 

In Dee against Porter we find the following: "It not infre- 
quently happens that a- judgment is affirmed upon a theory of 
the case which did not occur to the court that rendered it, or 
which did occur and was expressly repudiated. The human 
mind is so constituted that in many instances it finds the truth 
when wholly unable to find the way that leads to it. 

'The pupil of impulse, it forced him along, 
His conduct still right, with his argument wrong: 
Still aiming at honor, yet fearing to roam, 
The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home." 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 49 

In Forrester against State, the defendant undertook to 
evade the law against retailing intoxicating liquors without a 
license, by having his cook sell them in the kitchen. "In the 
defendant's kitchen, by his servant, in his presence, and with his 
cooperation, through the responses, 'Go to Mary' and 'Give the 
money to Mary/ the traffic was carried on. There is little 
doubt that the defendant was the deity of this rude shrine, and 
that Mary was only the ministering priestess. But if she was 
the divinity, and he her attending spirit to warn thirsty devotees 
where to drink, and at whose feet to lay their tribute, he is 
amenable to the State as the promoter of forbidden libations. 
Whether in these usurped rites he was serving Mary or Mary 
him, may make a difference with the gods and goddesses, but 
makes none with men." 

In Lester against Lester the question was about attaching 
a husband for contempt in refusing to pay alimony. This is 
what the Judge thought about it: "If a man, though having 
health, will not work for the support of his wife and minor chil- 
dren, a court cannot assume direct control of his will and muscle 
and compel him to labor. To be idle (taking the consequences) 
is one of the privileges of a freeman, unless he is convicted pen- 
ally of some offence, and put to work as a punishment. But 
while a civil court cannot order an able-bodied man to go to 
work, it can, in a proper case for alimony, order him to con- 
tribute so much money, at such and such times, to the main- 
tenance of his dependent family, and leave him to provide the 
money by the free and voluntary exercise of his faculties, mental 
and physical, or by any other means at his command. The 
attachment will bring the actual resources of the respondent to a 
practical and decisive test. Pressure is a great concentrator and 
developer of force. Under the stress of an attachment, even 
the vision of the respondent himself may be cleared and bright- 
ened, so that he will discern ways and means which were once 
hidden from him or seen obscurely." 

In speaking of the power of amendment on appeal, in Bur- 
rus against Moore, he says : "Curative measures are not restricted 
to the early stages of a case; our 'court physicians' now treat 
chronic disorders as well as acute ones." 



SO A MEMORIAL OF 

In Dodd against Middleton, the Judge dissented in the fol- 
lowing terms : "If I could be reinforced here by the votes, as I 
am by the opinions, of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massa- 
chusetts and the Court of Appeals of New York, I could easily 
put my brethren in the minority ; but as it is, they are two 
against one, and I have no option but to yield to the force of 
numbers, — in other words, to "the tyranny of majorities." 
Though twice beaten, I am still strong in the true faith, and am 
ready to suffer for it (moderately) on all proper occasions." 

"Courts of final review are bound by the rule of stare decisis 
both as a canon of public good and a law of self-preservation ; 
nevertheless, where a grave and palpable error, widely affecting 
the administration of justice, must either be solemnly sanc- 
tioned or repudiated, the maxim which applies is fiat justitia 
ruat caelum." 

Judge Bleckley has, of course, the defects of his qualities. 
The acute and subtle intellect will question and doubt, where 
minds of different cast will rest with certitude. The result of 
this highly critical faculty caused him great judicial travail, and 
in 1880 he broke down under his labors. His letter of resigna- 
tion to the Governor was as follows : — 

Atlanta, Ga., Jan. 22, 1880. 
His Excellency, Alfred H. Colquitt: 

Dear Sir, — I hereby lesign the office of Associate Justice of the 
Supreme Court for the following reasons : — 

First, I am not sufficiently learned in the law to be qualified on a 
large and liberal scale for judicial functions. In consequence of this 
deficiency I rarely know how to dispose of difficult cases until after a 
degree of labor which exhausts me in mere preparation for deciding. It 
follows that I am generally behind in writing out my opinions. At 
present I am much behind. 

Second, my health threatens to fail unless I change my mode of life. 

This resignation is designed to take effect on the first day of the 
approaching February term. 

Very respectfully your obedient, humble servant, 

L. E. Bleckley. 

There was universal confidence in the painful and unaffected 
modesty that prompted this letter; although in the opinion of 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 51 

the bar and the public there was a grim humor in it, coming 
from the one man in the state who was preeminently the best 
qualified for the bench. 

The Governor's graceful reply was as follows: — 

Executive Office, Jan. 26, 1880. 

Judge Logan E. Bleckley, Associate Justice Supreme Court, Atlanta, Ga. 

Dear Sir, — Your resignation as Associate Justice of the Supreme 
Court of Georgia has been received, and I hereby give you official notice 
of its acceptance, to take effect on the first day of the approaching Feb- 
ruary term. 

Permit me to express regret that you should feel it due to yourself 
to close your official duties and retire voluntarily from the high trust 
you have so faithfully discharged. I must beg to dissent from your 
modest estimate of your qualifications, and to assure you that I would 
not feel justified in accepting your resignation based alone on that ground. 
The consideration of your health, however, leaves me no alternative. 

With high respect for you personally and officially, I am, very 
respectfully, Your obedient servant, 

Alfred H. Colquitt. 

The most interesting episode of the resignation, however, 
was Judge Bleckley's poem on Rest, which he read on leaving 
the bench. Coming as it did from one who was in a state of 
physical collapse from overwork, its recognition of labor as the 
divine law for man was full of bravery and pathos. 

IN THE MATTER OF REST. 

Rest for hand and brow and breast, 
For fingers, heart, and brain ! 

Rest and peace! a long release 
From labor and from pain; 

Pain of doubt, fatigue, despair, — 

Pain of darkness everwhere, 
And seeking light in vain ! 

Peace and rest ! Are they the best 
For mortals here below? 

Is soft repose from work and woes 
A bliss for men to know? 



52 A MEMORIAL OF 

Bliss of time is bliss of toil : 
No bliss but this, from sun and soil, 
Does God permit to grow. 

During Judge Bleckley's retirement and recuperation he had 
time, between the intervals of consulting practice to which he 
sparingly returned, to deliver a number of literary addresses. 
The most remarkable of these were a series on Truth, — "Truth 
in Thought and Emotion," "Truth in Conduct," and "Truth at 
the Bar." From these and other papers I extract a few para- 
graphs at random: 

"Energy in goodness is often attended with a corresponding 
energy in well-meant evil. A striking instance of this is fur- 
nished by the history of religious persecution. Not many cen- 
turies ago it seems to have been one of the most sacred duties of 
a good man to burn a better one than himself." 

The following extracts from a Commencement Address con- 
tain a frank recognition of the demoralized state of Southern 
opinion, and a courageous assertion of his own principles : — 

"And I will venture to add, at the risk of meeting with some 
dissent possibly in my audience, certainly beyond it, that there is 
the same reason for rigid honesty in politics and public life, in 
elections and with electors and elected, as in ordinary private 
business or personal conduct. The political devil is no more to 
be fought with fire without terrible consequences to the best 
interest of the community, than is the devil of avarice or envy 
or ambition, or any other of the numerous devils which infest 
society." 

"I speak from a standpoint quite outside of politics and party 
lines, and what I say may be too visionary and theoretic for 
practical working; but if we have reached a stage of degeneracy 
where virtue has ceased to be practical, and where vice and 
fraud are forces of such potency that they can be met and 
resisted only by forces of like kind, I think wisdom is already a 
lost art, that we are on the confines of perdition, and that ere 
long we shall tumble over the wall and be swallowed up in 
the pit." 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 53 

The following paragraphs are selected from "Truth at the 
Bar," — an acute and metaphysical statement of the philosophy 
of legal procedure : — 

"Some meritorious cases, indeed many, are lost in passing 
through the justice of procedure; but they are all justly lost, 
provided the rules of procedure have been correctly applied to 
them. That a just debt is unrecognized, a just title defeated, 
or a guilty man acquitted, is no evidence that justice has not 
been done by the court or jury. It may be the highest evidence 
that justice has been done, for it is perfectly just not to enforce 
payment of a just debt, not to uphold a just title, not to convict 
a guilty man if the debt or the title or the guilt be not verified. 
It is unjust to do justice by doing injustice. A just discovery 
cannot be made by an unjust search. An end not attained by 
just means is not attainable at all; ethically it is an impossible 
end. Courts cannot do justice of substance except by and 
through justice of procedure. They must not reach justice of 
substance by violating justice of procedure. They must realize 
both, if they can; but if either has to fail, it must be justice of 
substance, for without justice of procedure courts cannot know, 
nor be made to know, what justice of substance is, or which 
party ought to prevail. As well might a man put out his eyes 
in order to see better, as for a court to stray from justice of 
procedure in order to administer justice of substance." 

'The problem, How not to tell the truth without telling a 
lie, is suggested for solution over and over again, not only to 
lawyers, but to physicians, bankers, brokers, merchants, me- 
chanics, farmers, even perhaps to clergymen, and, it may be, to 
the very ladies. Nothing would simplify intercourse for busi- 
ness, pleasure, civility, and ceremony so much as to give truth 
the right of way through all human affairs. Those of us who 
dislike the trouble of suppressing, and are skilled in arts of 
evasion, could heartily wish this were practicable; but it is not. 
It would be wiser to grant free passage to a cyclone. In the use 
of truth the lawyer is eclectic; say, if you please, he is economi- 
cal. But so is everybody else, and rightly so. A discreet silence 
is as much, and perhaps as often, the dictate of virtue as of 



54 A MEMORIAL OF 

interest or shame. A man who does not know how to keep 
truth in the house knows still less how to put it out of doors. 
It would be much safer practice to disclose nothing than to dis- 
close everything. Universal silence would do less harm than 
universal and unlimited communication. The world would be 
happier dumb than with no power to hush. 

" The day is no better bestowed than the night, 
And darkness is precious as well as the light.' " 

Judge Bleckley does not, like Blackstone, take a rose-colored 
view of the law. Its delays and its fossils are thus described : — 

"Those capital prizes of science termed fossils are especially 
odious. They are stigmatized by the practical with the very 
superlatives of aversion and contempt. A fossil is lost matter, 
corresponding, in a physical reprobation, to a lost soul in the 
spiritual. Stripped to its essence, it is time petrified by maledic- 
tion, the past preserved by a curse. The law, intensely modern, 
always leagued in sympathy with the present, always devoted 
to the practical, favors no fossils but its own. These it cher- 
ishes — sometimes too fondly — as priceless gems, inherited 
from ancestral opulence, the hoards of those grand old legal 
millionaires, the early sages." 

"The profession will always number among its members 
some typical lawyers, envoys from the past to the present, mes- 
sengers and expounders of precedent." 

"Time is the increasing factor, the growing element of mod- 
ern life. Progress is the realization, in short time, of what 
formerly occupied long time. At least this is one form of prog- 
ress, and that form with which we of the nineteenth century 
are in immediate contact, — a century that, if measured by the 
results in some of the spheres of human activity, might well 
count for a thousand years. How is it with practical remedial 
jurisprudence? Is it up with, or is it behind the age? Compare 
it with other business, public or private, — with operations of 
the War Department, the Navy, the Treasury, the Post-Office, 
the Interior; with commerce, manufactures, banking, transpor- 
tation, mining, farming; with the venerable and conservative 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 55 

vocations of teaching and preaching, — with anything, and what 
is its relative position? The main bulk of the world-work is 
ahead of it. Several branches of that work — for instance, the 
postal service, general transportation, commerce, and manufac- 
tures, — are so far in advance that the law seems to crawl, 
whilst they go on wings." 

The following discussion of intellectual honesty has an auto- 
biographic interest: — 

"No man on earth knows enough at any given hour to qualify 
him to be a judge of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Such, at 
least, is my opinion. I have long since proved that I have never 
kjnown enough at any one time to suffice for the duties of a 
single day. Every day I needed more knowledge than I had, 
and every day I acquired more. Only by so doing could I meet 
and discharge the demands made upon me by current business. 
An inventory of my permanent outfit for judicial functions would 
show the following particulars : First, a clear and impressive 
realization of my own ignorance, along with an alert faculty for 
distinguishing between what I know and what I do not know ; 
secondly, a fair acquaintance with the general principles of law ; 
thirdly, the power — partly natural and partly acquired — to 
discriminate between true law and most of the counterfeits or 
imitations of it; and fourthly, a determination to ascertain, if 
possible, the true law of each case, at any cost of care and labor. 

"With an outfit so restricted as this I have found it practi- 
cable to turn off judicial product of an average quality, though 
on a few occasions I have had to hire help by the day's work, at 
an expense of more than half my per diem. 'To thyself be true' 
has its first and deepest application to the processes of our think- 
ing; to the discipline, scrutiny, and analysis of our thoughts. 
He who is unfair in dealing with his own mind unfits himself 
for fair dealing with other minds. In consequence of having 
committed actual fraud upon himself, he attempts to commit 
constructive fraud on all to whom his arguments are addressed. 
He need not mean or intend to deceive, — for one who offers 
the fruits of self-deception to others, though ever so honestly, 
attempts unwittingly to deceive by the very offer; and he does 



56 A MEMORIAL OF 

•deceive by it if the offer is accepted. The counterfeit coin which 
passes as genuine is none the less counterfeit because he who 
offers and he who takes it both believe it to be good money. The 
great security for honest argument is honest thinking. And one 
essential of honesty is accuracy, at least in those minds which 
are capable of accuracy. Perhaps there are some which are 
incapable of it, but of this I am not certain. 

"It is incumbent upon every mind that thinks with a view to 
argument or discussion, whether in the field of morals, politics, 
theology, legislation, law, or general science, to be perpetually 
on its guard against self-deception. Only by so doing can it 
shun fraudulent negligence, though it may not intend to com- 
mit fraud in fact. As to the latter kind of fraud, there ought 
to be no doubt of its turpitude. To steal a conclusion and profit 
by it to another's injury should be regarded as no less forbidden 
in .the court of conscience than to steal an article of property. A 
larceny committed by false logic or florid rhetoric, used inten- 
tionally to mislead, deserves rebuke quite as much as would a 
false reckoning in casting up an account, and thus producing a 
false balance by design. Fair-mindedness, honest thought and 
its honest utterance, without the petty pride that too often 
attends exceptional frankness, would, if generally prevalent, 
contribute more than all other forces to the discovery and dis- 
semination of truth. I speak not of an absent virtue, but of one 
which has always been in the world. It prevails widely, but it 
ought to be universal." 

The concluding paragraph of the following dissertation on 
"Doubt" probably expresses a state of mind not uncommon in 
the theological ferment of our times : — 

"Correctness of thought is conformity of thought to things, 
and of thought to thought. I have never met any person who 
believed he did not know that which he knew; but nothing is 
more common than for us to think we know what we do not. 
We never mistake our knowledge for ignorance, except perhaps 
in extreme metaphysics ; but we constantly mistake our ignor- 
ance for knowledge. And the remedy for this, so far as there 
is a remedy, is the practice of mental candor until it becomes a 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 57 

fixed habit, the cultivation of an intellectual conscience. He 
whose opinions are all convictions is as reckless intellectually as 
he is morally whose assertions are all categorical. Conviction 
has no more right to go beyond evidence and just inference than 
statement has to go beyond conviction. A man should be hardly 
less careful not to deceive himself in thought than he is not to 
deceive others by expression. It is as hurtful to truth to decide 
when we ought to doubt, as to doubt when we ought to decide. 
We should feel no reluctance to confess our ignorance always 
to ourselves, and when circumstances call for it to others. The 
phrase, "I don't know," honestly and fairly used, humbles us ; 
but when so used, it covers much the larger part of truth. We 
should use it honestly and fairly, both to ourselves and others ; 
always, however, remembering that we are not to deny, even in 
thought, the existence of a thing because we do not know of its 
existence. It is the lack of such knowledge that constitutes 
ignorance. This lack is the very stuff of which ignorance is 
made. If we knew all existences, taking the term as including 
both the actual and the potential, we should know everything, 
for there is nothing else to know. We have no more warrant 
for dogmatizing at random negatively than affirmatively. The 
forms of language force us very often to be dogmatic in expres- 
sion, but this does not oblige us to be dogmatic in thought. If 
we attempted to communicate in discourse all the qualifications 
and all the shades and degrees of qualification that we realize, 
or ought to realize, in thinking, we should only perplex or mis- 
lead our hearers. It has been remarked that no one ever means 
precisely what he says, for no one ever says precisely what he 
means. Doubt is a state of mind proper to any high degree of 
uncertainty. It is a question whether anything is uncertain in 
and of itself, — whether all contingency is not in knowledge, 
none of it in the objects of knowledge. The so-called contin- 
gent events of to-morrow are at this moment uncertain to the 
whole human race; but if they are known to God, they have 
certainty relatively to him. He never doubts. Whether we will 
or not, we must live with uncertainty and die with it. Rela- 
tively to us it extends over a part of truth as surely as certainty 



58 A MEMORIAL OF 

does over another part. To doubt too much is to carry over by 
self-deception the certain into the uncertain; to doubt too little 
is to carry over by self-deception the uncertain into the certain. 
Not to do either should be a matter of solicitude with 
every lover of truth. The repose of conviction is very 
desirable and very seductive. To doubt is never pleasant, 
often painful, sometimes agonizing. And in so far as this 
prompts to inquiry and urges us to decision, it is very 
useful; but when it induces us to decide without inquiry or 
evidence, or without the proper use of them, the result is 
like declaring victory before fighting the battle. If we were so 
constituted that we could not doubt, what security would there 
be for truth ? What could more cripple the mind than to deprive 
it either of the power of doubting or the power of believing? 
To face frankly and fairly the terrors of uncertainty requires 
courage. Indeed, to think at all, responsibly, rationally, and 
with absolute fidelity to truth, upon many subjects requires the 
highest degree of courage. It is easier, perhaps, to stand before 
a loaded cannon and see the match applied, than to adopt a con- 
clusion utterly destructive to past convictions long cherished, 
and to the authority upon which they rested, in a matter of vital 
interest and of personal concern." 

In 1887, on the death of Chief-Justice Jackson, Judge Bleck- 
ley returned to the bench as his successor. Since that time he 
has done continuous work; but having found that the body is 
not an indestructible machine, he works with more regard for 
physical limitations. He has given much attention to the matter 
of reducing the unnecessary work of the court. An Act of the 
Legislature was recently passed, which allows the plaintiff in 
error to specify in his bill of exceptions only such parts of the 
record in the court below as bear upon the exceptions. The 
opposite party may specify others, if he thinks other portions 
necessary. This gets rid of much chaff in every case, and saves 
expense to the parties. It is understood that this measure 
originated with the court. 

Judge Bleckley is the author of a very useful device to secure 
a fair statement of the case at the outset of the argument. A 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 59 

rule of court requires the Reporter of the court to prepare 
an abstract or statement of each case, either party having leave 
to suggest additions or corrections. 

Judge Bleckley's disclaimer of learning, "lay or legal," is of 
a piece with his reason for resignation in 1880. His point of 
view is the pinnacle which not many so-called learned men ever 
reach, — the knowledge of the extent of the domain of ignor- 
ance. He is one of the few men in Georgia who could hold his 
own in a discussion of German metaphysics. But this is one of 
many diversions which he has resolutely denied himself in a 
stern devotion to the law, — a devotion which he so well de- 
scribed, because drawn from his own experience, in the beautiful 
tribute to Justice Hall, and to which he refers, both in earnest 
and in jest, in his "Letter to Posterity," published elsewhere in 
this number. What form of self-denial is at once so bitter and 
heroic as that of the intellectual man who, with capacity and 
desire to "take all knowledge for his province," calls back his 
faculties from the universe of thought, study, and speculation 
which they seem created to explore, and concentrates them on a 
single line of human activity, because, forsooth, the mind is 
"chained to a body of death," and the butcher's bill must be 
paid, and good work on the one task in hand requires the 
sacrifice? 

The high reward of such a sacrifice — the thought which 
reconciles the man of genius with the work of bar and bench — 
has never been so aptly expressed as by Judge Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, — "the subtle rapture of a postponed power ;" "the 
intoxicating authority which controls the future from within 
by shaping the thoughts and speech of a later time ;" such 
men are to be honored, not by regiments moving with high 
heads to martial music, but by a few others, lonely as them- 
selves, walking apart in meditative silence, and dreaming in 
their turn the dream of spiritual reign." 



A LETTER TO POSTERITY. 

Written by Judge Bleckley and published in The Green Bag, Boston, 

February, 1892. 



Reprinted by permission of S. R. Writtington, Esq., 
Editor The Green Bag. 



A LETTER TO POSTERITY. 

Some humorous compliments fabricated by the good humor 
of the "Albany Law Journal" 1 have rendered me conspicuous 
in the eyes of that restless part of mankind, the seekers after 
photographs and biography. To supply photographs is only to 
increase the cost of living, but to concoct autobiography involves 
psychological distress, especially to a person whose stock of 
materials is no larger than mine. 

One of the applicants for a sketch of my life insists that I 
ought to lay open my career and expose my true inwardness to 
posterity. Protesting that my reluctance has been overcome by 
his importunity (that is, by an irresistible force impinging upon 
a movable body), and that it would never have yielded to any- 
thing less powerful, I have written with my own hand the fol- 
lowing epistle to that portion of the human race for whose 
enlightenment my kind-hearted tormentor is so anxious. 

Atlanta, Ga., a. d., 1891. 
To Posterity: Greeting. I regret that I shall be absent 
when you arrive, and that we shall never meet. I should be 
pleased to make your acquaintance, but it is impossible to await 
your coming, the present state of the law of nature being opposed 
to such dilatory proceedings. There is no hope of amending 
that law in time for my case. Though aware of your approach 
collectively as a body of respectable citizens, I shall never hear 
of a single individual among you. Nor is it likely you will ever 
hear of me by name, fame, or reputation, unless with the aid 
of a microphone of extraordinary power. Nevertheless, if the 
highways between the ages remain in good condition and repair, 
this communication, though virtually anonymous, may possibly 
reach you. In that event I bespeak for it your attention for one 
moment per generation, which, on a fair division of your 
valuable time, will be my full share and something over. I claim 

1 See, besides other instances, vol. xxiii. p. 264. 



64 A MEMORIAL OF 

no vested right to your notice. If I have any color of title, it is 
contingent upon the quality of my services to the public as a 
member of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Of these services 
there is documentary evidence, though of a perishable nature, 
in certain volumes of the Georgia Reports, 1 to which I refer 
with unaffected diffidence. I must not be understood as request- 
ing you to read all of my opinions, but on the contrary, I give 
friendly warning not to read half of them, unless you desire to 
undergo a certain drowsy experience which is commonly called 
being bored. In that state of feeling scores of them were writ- 
ten. It is not to be expected that the reader would suffer less 
than the writer. I have a theory that such writings might be 
terse, crispy, graceful, animated, and entertaining; but mine 
afford few specimens of that kind. Yet, to treat them with jus- 
tice, I am sensible that they are not more dry than those of some 
other judges. 

I came to the bench as an Associate Justice of the Supreme 
Court in the summer of 1875, and resigned early in 1880, worn 
down and tired out. My last deliverance was "In the Matter of 
Rest," 2 a brief judicial poem. I would conciliate the critical 
taste of future generations by craving pardon, not for the verses, 
but for the doubtful decorum of reciting them from a seat tra- 
ditionally sacred to the oracles of prose. The loss of my ability 
to labor without great fatigue made me long for rest, but did 
not weaken my conviction that labor is the twin brother of hap- 
piness, — the moral of the poem. Others might have suggested 
it as well or better in prose, but I could not. Perhaps I ought 
to confess that divers other poems (happily none of them 
judicial) may be laid to my charge. During most of my life 
I have had a strong and to me unaccountable propensity to 
metrical transgression. Over and over again have I suffered 
the pains and penalties of poetic guilt. Besides a score or two 
of convictions, I have had many trials and narrow escapes. But 
even now I am not a hardened offender, for a bashful hesitation 
always tempers my gallantry with the Muses. 



1 54 to 64 Ga. 77 to 83, and some not yet published. 

2 64 Ga. 452. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 65 

My resignation was the result of overwork, and overwork 
was the result of my ignorance of the law, together with an 
apprehension that I might be ignorant when I supposed I was 
not. To administer law it is desirable, though not always neces- 
sary, to know it. The labor of learning rapidly on a large scale, 
and the constant strain to shun mistakes in deciding cases, shat- 
tered my nerves and impaired my health. In its effect on the 
deciding faculty, the apprehension of ignorance counts for as 
much as ignorance itself. My mind is slow to embrace a firm 
faith in its supposed knowledge. However ignorant a judge 
may be, whenever he thoroughly believes he understands the 
law of his case, he is ready to decide it, — no less ready than if 
he had the knowledge which he thinks he has. And he will 
often decide correctly, for the law may be as he supposes, 
whether he knows it or not. My trouble is, to become fully per- 
suaded that I know. I seem not to have found the law out in a 
reliable way. I detect so many mistakes committed by others, 
and convict myself of error so often, that most of my conclus- 
ions on difficult questions are only provisional. I reconsider, 
revise, scrutinize, revise the scrutiny, and scrutinize the revision. 
But my faith in the ultimate efficiency of work is unbounded. 
The law is too often unknown, but is never unknowable. I 
finally settle down, painful deliberation ceases, and I doubt no 
more until I am engaged in writing out the opinion of the court, 
when I discover perhaps that the thing is all wrong. My col- 
leagues are called again into consultation; we reconsider the 
case, and decide it the other way. Then I am satisfied ; for when 
I know the law is not on one side, it must be on the other. 

I remained in private life until January, 1887, when on the 
death of Chief- Justice Jackson I became his successor. My term 
of office will expire with the year 1892. 

I will now recount briefly the principal events of my personal 
history prior to the beginning of my judicial career. I was 
born in the woods, amid the mountains of northeastern Georgia, 
July 3, 1827. My native county, Rabun, had then been organ- 
ized but seven or eight years, up to which period it was the 
wilderness home of Indians, — the Cherokees. At eleven vears 



66 A MEMORIAL OF 

of age I commenced writing in the office of my father, who at 
that time was a farmer without any lands and tenements, and 
with very few goods and chattels. He lived on a rented home- 
stead, one mile from Clayton, the county town, and was clerk of 
three courts, — the superior, inferior, and ordinary. He was a 
man of strong intellect, fair information, and some business 
experience. He had been sheriff of the county. A more sterling 
character was not in the world, — certainly not in that large 
group called the middle class, to which he belonged. Loyal to 
truth, he scorned sham, pretence, and mendacity. He was a 
native of North Carolina, as was my mother also. His blood 
was English and Irish combined; hers German. 

I gradually acquired skill in office business, and more and 
more of it fell to my share, till at length I could give all of it 
competent attention. In this way, and by observing what was 
done and said in the courts, I contracted a relish for law, and 
became familiar with legal documents and forms of procedure. 
The statutes, strange to say, were pleasant reading, and at inter- 
vals I read them with assiduity. Of course, my comprehension 
of them was imperfect, and still more imperfect was my mastery 
of the Constitution of the State and that of the United States. 
But I had a boy's acquaintance with all these, or with most of 
them, by the time I was seventeen. At that age I borrowed Black- 
stone and some other elementary books, and entered upon the 
study of law in earnest. There was no resident lawyer in the 
county; so I read alone, going once or twice to an adjoining 
county to be examined by some attorneys who took a friendly 
interest in directing my studies. One of these was the late 
Judge Underwood, to whose memory I have from the bench 
paid a tribute in such words as I could command in an extem- 
poraneous address, 1 but not such as he deserved. 

Having prepared myself crudely for admission, I was admit- 
ted to the bar in April, 1846, shortly before I was nineteen. 
Though for the following two years I had a monopoly of the 
minor practice, and a fraction of that which was of some import- 
ance, the litigation of one sparsely settled mountain county 

i See 83 Ga. 817. 






LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 67 

which fell to my share was too inconsiderable to break the con- 
tinuity of my studies, or rather my legal meditations. I was 
absorbed, and had visions. I saw Sovereignty. I beheld the 
Law in its majesty and beauty. I personified it as a queen or 
an empress. It was my sovereign mistress, my phantom lady. 

Oh, lady, lady, lady! 

Since I see you everywhere, 
I know you are a phantom, — 

A woman of the air! 
I know you are ideal, 

But yet you seem to me 
As manifestly real 

As anything can be. 
Oh, soul-enchanting shadow, 

In the day and in the night, 
As I gaze upon your beauty 

I tremble with delight. 

If men would hear me whisper 

How beautiful you seem, 
They should slumber while they listen, 

And dream it in a dream; 
For nothing so exquisite 

Can the waking senses reach, — 
Too fair and soft and tender 

For the nicest arts of speech. 

In a pensive, dreamy silence 

I am very often found, 
As if listening to a rainbow 

Or looking at a sound. 
'Tis then I see your beauty 

Reflected through my tears, 
And I feel that I have loved you 

A thousand thousand years. 

My professional income for these two years, not counting- 
insolvent fees, amounted to between thirty-five and fifty dollars 
per annum. Having no means with which to establish myself 
elsewhere and wait for a clientage, I determined to suspend prac- 
tice and engage in a more lucrative department of labor until I 



68 A MEMORIAL OF 

could accumulate a small capital. I sought and obtained employ- 
ment as book-keeper in the State railroad office at Atlanta. In 
this situation I remained for three years, my compensation rang- 
ing from $40 to $66 per month. In the fourth year I was trans- 
ferred to Milledgeville, then the capital of the State, being 
appointed one of the Governor's secretaries, at a salary of $1,200. 
A new incumbent of the executive chair was inaugurated in 
November, 1851, and both my health and my politics needing 
repairs, I returned to private life. I had saved enough from my 
earnings to supply me with the skeleton of a library, and to sup- 
port me some months as a candidate for practice. In March, 
1852, being then nearly twenty-five years of age, I opened an 
office in Atlanta, and my thoughts and dreams were again of law 
and of nothing else. The phantom lady haunted me as before, 
and seemed as beautiful as ever. Indeed, though I had been 
cool, I had been constant in my devotion to her through the 
four years I was out of her service. Clients gradually ventured 
within my chambers, and I soon had a moderate prosperity, due 
chiefly to acquaintance made in railroad circles during my three 
3'ears' service as a railway clerk. In 1853 I was elected to the 
office of Solicitor-General for my judicial circuit, which embraced 
eight counties. My term of service was four years, in the last 
of which happened the crowning success of my whole life, — I 
was married. Until 1861 I continued the practice in Atlanta. 
The first battle of Manassas, alias Bull Run, occurred while I 
was in a camp of instruction, endeavoring to acquire some skill 
in the noble art of homicide. By nature I am pacific. The mili- 
tary spirit has but a feeble development in my constitution. 
Nevertheless, I tried the fortunes of a private soldier for a short 
time in behalf of the Southern Confederacy. I was discharged 
on account of ill-health, after a few months' service in Western 
Virginia, without having shed any one's blood or lost any blood 
of my own. The state of my martial emotions was somewhat 
peculiar : I loved my friends, but did not hate my enemies. With- 
out getting "fighting mad," I went out to commit my share of 
slaughter, being actuated by a solemn sense of duty, unmixed 
with spite or ill-will. When I consider how destructive I might 






LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 69 

have been had my health supported my prowess, I am disposed 
to congratulate "gentlemen on the other side" upon my forced 
retirement from the ranks at an early period of the contest. To 
the best of my remembrance, I was very reluctant but very 
determined to fight. However, all my military acts were utterly 
null and void. After my discharge from the army, I served the 
Confederacy in much of its legal business at and around Atlanta. 
Occasionally I took part, also, in short terms of camp duty as a 
member of the militia. In 1864, about the time General Sherman 
left Atlanta on his march to the sea, I was appointed to the 
office of Supreme Court Reporter. After reporting two volumes, 
the 34th and 35th Ga., I resigned that office. This was in the 
spring of 1867. From that time till I was appointed to the 
Supreme Bench in 1875, I practiced law continuously in Atlanta. 
Such education as I received in my boyhood was acquired at 
the village academy of my native county, an institution of meagre 
resources and a limited range of instruction. Although in the 
course of a somewhat studious lifetime I have added considerably 
to my early stock, the plain truth is that while not illiterate, I am 
destitute of real learning, lay or legal. My highest aspiration, 
so far as this life is concerned, is to do good judicial work. 
Sendee is better than salary, duty more inspiring than reward. 
My devotion to law is the spiritual consecration of a loving dis- 
ciple, a devout minister. L. E. Bleckley. 



TRUTH AT THE BAR. 

An Address delivered by Judge Bleckley at the third annual meeting 

of the Georgia Bar Association, Atlanta, 

August 27th, 1886. 



Reprinted from the Annual Report. 



TRUTH AT THE BAR. 

Law is the scripture of Justice, the gospel of Right, and Truth 
is the minister at its altars. Error is a pretender to holy orders, 
a wolf in sheep's clothing, always striving to usurp the sacred 
office, or to share in the exercise of its functions. To exclude 
Error from the sanctuary, and to admit and keep Truth within 
it, are objects of sedulous endeavor in every system of enlight- 
ened jurisprudence. 

Laying aside metaphor, neither truth nor error can be effec- 
tive in judicial proceedings except as premises or as conclusions. 
Premises are of fact or of law ; and conclusions are also of fact, or 
of law, or of both together. Thus, truth is truth of fact, truth 
of law, and truth of logic. Error is deviation from truth in 
premises or in conclusion, and, like truth, is of fact, of law, or 
of logic. The modes of deviation are by suggestion of the erro- 
neous, or by suppression of the true. Deviation by suggestion 
is falsehood, fiction or mistake. Falsehood is concealed fabri- 
cation; fiction is admitted fabrication; and mistake is ignorant 
fabrication. Deviation by suppression is failure to suggest a 
part of truth necessary to exclude error or to make truth com- 
plete. Suppression is either warranted or unwarranted ; war- 
ranted where there is no engagement, express or implied, not to 
suppress; unwarranted where there is such engagement. War- 
ranted suppression is consistent with veracity ; unwarranted sup- 
pression involves deception, and is therefore falsehood. 

Though speech and writing are the ordinary media of sug- 
gestion, any voluntary sign by which thought or feeling is in- 
tentionally communicated from one mind to another is, for the 
occasion, a sufficient medium. False suggestions may conse- 
quently be made by acts as well as by words, or even by silence 
where silence is rightly understood to affirm or deny. That "si- 
lence gives consent" is attested by a familiar proverb of high 
antiquity. 



74 A MEMORIAL OF 

From truth in the sense of veracity, there can be no blame- 
less deviation ; but from truth in the broader sense of antithesis 
to error (the sense in which the term is, for the most part, used 
in this address,) all forms of deviation are without breach of 
veracity except two. These two are concealed fabrication, and 
unwarranted suppression, each of which is falsehood as well as 
error. 

False suggestions of fact can have no more toleration at the 
Bar than elsewhere. That they are made at the Bar is no ex- 
cuse for them, but rather the contrary, for there, if anywhere, 
truth of fact is essential. And truth of law is not less essential 
or less sacred. To fabricate law and utter it as genuine, know- 
ing it to be forged, is quite as reprehensible as to invent fact. 
An example under this head may be given without exposing 
any one but myself. The statute required that testimony taken 
by interrogatories should be sealed up and directed to the mag- 
istrate who issued the commission. Testimony thus taken, and 
borne by a messenger, was presented by him in open Court to 
be received, and was objected to because, though sealed up, no 
direction was written on the package. I parried the objection 
with proof by the messenger that the commissioners directed him 
to deliver the package to the proper^magistrate. This evasion 
of the statute served its purpose, and as I knew that it was, on 
my part, a false suggestion of law, it was a fabrication of law. 
This occurred in the infancy of my professional life, and I claim 
that it is the sole instance of such dereliction with which I am 
chargeable, but whether this claim is not another fabrication 
may, perhaps, fall under the maxim, "Falms in imo, falsus in 
omnibus." If this severe maxim will not allow me to be be- 
lieved at all, then nobody can believe, upon my statement, that I 
ever fabricated anything, and certainly I shall introduce no other 
witness to prove that I did. 

False logic is on a par, in every respect, with false fact or 
law. Conclusions, whether from premises of fact or premises 
of law, or from both combined, if suggested under a known but 
concealed fallacy or sophism, are as bad fabrications as if the 
premises were also invented. What profits it that premises are 






LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 75 

true if by deceitful manipulation they are made to pull after 
them false conclusions? The only possible utility of true pre- 
mises is to serve as data for true conclusions. To wrest them to 
an opposite purpose is not only to thwart but pervert them. Lies 
of fact, lies of law and lies of logic have the same parentage — 
they are all born of insincerity, and are members of the same 
wicked family. Dialectic breaches of veracity are doubtless very 
rare, for, though sophistry is common enough, the sophistical 
reasoner, heated by zeal, imposes on himself so easily that 
he is under little temptation to practice imposition upon others. 
Like Mahomet, he begins by converting his own household. By 
nothing are we so sure of being deluded as by subtle and ingen- 
ious arguments discovered by ourselves. All the serpents out- 
side are not half so dangerous as the one that slips about in our 
own garden. Emotional sophistry, especially, is the bosom 
friend of error; and when the emotion is false as well as the 
logic it uses, the combination is abominable. Passion not felt 
but feigned, vehemence affected in order to warm with fox-fire, 
and other prevarications by pathetic display, are lies of the soul, 
not merely of the mind and body. They are not less, but more 
unjustifiable than cold intellectual falsehood. To deceive the 
head through the heart is worse than deceiving it through the 
brain alone. Nor is this condemnation any disparagement of 
eloquence as a virtuous and useful instrumentality in producing 
conviction and vindicating truth. It is rather a protest against 
spurious imitation — against all fustian declamation from which 
sincerity is absent. Though like counterfeit paper money, it may 
pass by deceiving, it has no virtue of the genuine article except 
appearance. He who does not suffer the glorious agony of the 
orator, but assumes the character and plays it for victory, pro- 
fanes the affections to seduce the understanding. When we ex- 
hibit signs of emotion, we necessarily profess that measure of 
conviction (not representative but personal and individual con- 
viction,) which nature has made the foundation of such emotion; 
and where the conviction is wanting, we misrepresent truth of 
thought as well as truth of feeling. 



76 A MEMORIAL OF 

The Bar is no place for sham or dissimulation, whether in 
speech or action. In legal attack and defense, there is a field 
for strategy, but none for stratagem. Litigation, though con- 
test, is not war but peace; its rights are pacific, and so are its 
methods and morality. It accepts the service of art in the sense 
of skill and in the sense of address, but not in the low sense of 
artifice, trick, trap, subterfuge or chicanery. If these uworthy 
forms of art ever appear in practice, it can only be because the 
principle which excludes them is unknown, misapplied through 
mistake, or willfully violated. 

Thus much on falsehood by suggestion, or concealed fabri- 
cation. The remaining form of falsehood, that of unwarranted 
suppression, cannot occur unless veracity becomes engaged to 
make the disclosure in question. Mere knowledge, and silently 
holding truth under cover, will pledge veracity to nothing; but 
a pledge will arise out of any promise, sign or circumstance from 
which a right in another person to have the disclosure made is 
fairly deducible. Against either idle, or aggressive curiosity, 
silence may hold out to the end, and suffer the inquisitive mind 
to fill itself with as many errors of inference as it pleases to em- 
brace. The responsibility for all such is with itself. We are 
not obliged to part with truth as a gratuity ; but we are obliged 
to pay it out when we owe it as a debt, no matter how hurtful 
the disclosure may be to our interest. Truth as a whole, being 
divisible, we may divide it, utter some and keep back the rest, 
but we are not at liberty to cut it into slices so minute that what 
we put forth will mislead or deceive. We are bound to give 
our communications bulk enough to make them rightly under- 
stood, when fairly interpreted, so far as they go. Like some 
drugs, truth is often poisonous in small doses. We must take 
care to issue it in doses large enough, if not to medicate, at least 
to be harmless, and, in paying all of our debts, to over-pay 
rather than fall short. 

Warranted suppression begins where unwarranted suppres- 
sion ends, and covers the remaining territory of knowledge. I 
will give two examples, the first between counsel and Court, the 
second between counsel and client. My client's rights depended 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 77 

upon a foreign testament never recorded. Before bringing the 
suit, I had access to a letter written by his adversary, in which 
it was stated that the lex doniicillii of the testator did not require 
testaments to be recorded. In setting out my client's title, I 
alleged this supposed rule of law in my pleadings, and it was 
admitted in the adversary's answer. Before the trial, however, I 
ascertained the law to be otherwise, and that an unrecorded 
testament would not verify title. Nevertheless, at the trial I 
said nothing of this discovery, but took the benefit of the erro- 
neous allegation and admission, and recovered. As there was 
no point made to the Court on the record of the paper, I was 
under no duty to mention it; and perhaps if any point had been 
made, I might have had the requisite recording attended to in 
time to serve the exigencies of my case. To pass to the other 
instance. I had one of those charming clients, a woman. She 
was a widow, and liked to talk about her case. When she had 
exhausted the facts, she would take up the law and discuss it 
with bewitching simplicity. Neither she nor I knew the law of 
her case, but in one of her artless conversations she accidentally 
told me what it was, although she did not then consciously know 
it herself, and never did. The case was gained upon her disclos- 
ure of the law, and she supposed the success was mine, but it was 
really her own. I was too modest to tell her that she was her 
own lawyer, and that I was a mere interpreter of her intuitive 
legal wisdom. 

No doubt there is much truth, a vast amount of it, in the 
green room, or behind the scenery, that never appears on the 
legal stage, and of which Courts, adversaries and the public, and 
very often clients, are allowed to get no glimpse. What fifty 
thousand lawyers know, over and above what they tell, would 
fatigue a hundred thousand poets to imagine. They are sup- 
posed by the non-initiated to have secrets, and to keep them, and 
to use them for the benefit of their clients, and this is true; but 
the imputation upon their candor which frequently goes along 
with this supposition is far from being well founded. Those 
who complain of the want of candor at the Bar should consider 
how candor fares elsewhere. Who exposes everything? who, 



78 A MEMORIAL OF 

at least, that wears clothes? "They made themselves aprons of 
fig leaves." "I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid my- 
self." Who does not hide? Who conceals nothing? Who does 
not wear an apron over his mind, his heart, his soul? Conceal- 
ment is a part of the daily discipline of a clothes-wearing people, 
and yet clothes are to be worn. "The Lord God made coats of 
skins and clothed them." And events, transactions, are to be 
concealed as well as nakedness : "See thou tell no man." "See 
that no man know it." Every mind has and must have its se- 
crets, though well aware that the truth which is concealed, and 
kept concealed, would, if known, powerfully influence other 
minds in thought, feeling and conduct. It is precisely because 
of such influence, and to prevent it from operating, that secrecy 
is universally practiced. If all truth were put in circulation, 
none of it hoarded and suffered to lie idle, society would be dis- 
rupted in a month — perhaps in a week. It would be more ter- 
rible than "an army with banners." Much of the perplexity of 
social life results from our having to discover expedients for 
suppressing truth without directly suggesting falsehood. The 
problem, how not to tell the truth without telling a lie, is sug- 
gested for solution over and over again, not only to lawyers, but 
to physicians, bankers, brokers, merchants, mechanics, farmers, 
even perhaps to clergymen, and it, may be, to the very ladies. 
Nothing would simplify intercourse for business, pleasure, civ- 
ilty, ceremony, any purpose, as much as to give truth the right 
of way through all human affairs. Those of us who dislike the 
trouble of suppressing, and are little skilled in the arts of evas- 
ion, could heartily wish this were practicable ; but it is not ; it 
would be wiser to grant free passage to a cyclone. In the use 
of truth, the lawyer is eclectic — say, if you please, he is eco- 
nomical ; but so is everybody else, and rightly so. A discreet 
silence is as much, and perhaps as often, the dictate of virtue 
as of interest or shame. A man who does not know how to 
keep truth in the house, knows still less how to put it out of 
doors. It would be a much safer practice to disclose nothing 
than to disclose everything. Universal silence would do less 
harm than universal and unlimited communication. The world 
would be happier dumb than with no power to hush. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 79 

"The day is no better bestowed than the night, 
And darkness is precious, as well as the light." 

Having classified truth and error in general, then considered 
falsehood in both its forms, and then glanced at warranted sup- 
pression, that is, suppression of truth without the violation of 
truth, I come now to the question of suggesting truth without 
the violation of morality. It is clear that the use of falsehood 
is not allowable in any case/ on either side. Is truth, equally 
with falsehood, to be excluded from one side, or may it be sug- 
gested on both sides, and urged for what it is worth in the in- 
terest of one party as well as the other? To answer this ques- 
tion on principle, involves some closeness and thoroughness of 
examination. 

The problem for judicial mind as a whole, whether all on 
the bench or some in the jury box, is to pass from ignorance to 
justice. Every Court, (by which I mean the aggregate of the 
deciding power,) though it may know beforehand the general 
law and facts common alike to all cases, or to all of any given 
class, is ignorant of the special law and facts involved in any 
particular case. While this ignorance continues justice is not 
discernable, and hence there is no way to pass immediately from 
ignorance to justice unless by mere chance, by casting lots or 
otherwise appealing to fortune. To pass intelligently, ignorance 
must be succeeded by knowledge, the steps being, first, from ig- 
norance to knowledge of truth, and, secondly, from knowledge of 
truth to justice. The means of making this movement is pro- 
cedure; and so, with ignorance at one extreme and justice at the 
other, the whole line, filled up, is as follows: ignorance, pro- 
cedure, knowledge, justice. Knowledge being indispensable to 
justice, and procedure indispensable to knowledge, procedure is 
the portal, the only portal, to justice. Without it a Court could 
not distinguish justice from injustice — could not recognize or 
identify justice, so as to determine either its presence or its ab- 
sence. No matter, therefore, on which side of a case justice 
may be, or whether partly on one side and partly on the other, 
procedure is something in which both parties have an interest, 



80 A MEMORIAL OF 

to say nothing of the interest in it of the Court or of the public 
as the only means of carrying on judicial work and making 
Courts available. This interest of the parties is so important 
that every rule of procedure, unless purely discretionary with 
the Court (as some of them are), is always attended with a cor- 
responding right of procedure, vested in one or both of the 
parties, each party having the rights appropriate to his position 
in the case as plaintiff or defendant. The result is, that in- 
cident to these rights there is a body of remedial justice — jus- 
tice of procedure, which is altogether apart from and quite in- 
dependent of justice of substance, or the ultimate justice of 
the case. Relatively to procedure, any and every case is just en 
both sides, for each side has rights of procedure, and it is just 
that these rights should be allowed and administered according 
to the rules which grant and govern them. It is through rights 
of procedure that rights of substance are judicially ascertained: 
through justice of procedure justice of substance is administered. 
Procedure necessary to correct decision has several elements, 
but the one for which the others exist, and in which they culmi- 
nate, is verification, or the establishment, by appropriate evi- 
dence, of the facts and law on which, and according to which, 
final decision is to be made. Verification converts claim, or un- 
verified case into verified case ; and this latter alone is decided. 
No unverified case is ever adjudged. When the ultimate decis- 
ion is to be made, the case as verified is treated as the full, com- 
plete and only real case, and all unverified claim on either side is 
ignored. Argument is one of the instrumentalities of verifica- 
tion, whether made from time to time as the evidence of fact is 
being adduced, upon points for or against its admission, or after 
the evidence of fact is all in, upon its effect, or upon the law ap- 
plicable to it, or, where the facts are admitted, upon the law 
alone. It contributes to the verification of law by citing and 
quoting books and other memorials of authority as evidence of 
it, and by general reasoning. It marshals law and facts to- 
gether, points out the presence or absence of premises, urges their 
sufficiency or insufficiency, and traces them to their conclusions. 
When the requisite premises are in the verified case the conclus- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY , 81 

ions are in it also, but the connection is often obscure and needs 
to be rendered obvious to the deciding power, whether judge 
or jury. 

Thus, it is apparent that procedure is the door between claim 
and case, that is, between unverified case and verified case. The 
judge is the door-keeper, and each party may challenge every- 
thing presented for admission by anybody but himself. This is 
a right granted by the maker and owner of the door. Even the 
jurisdiction of the Court to entertain the case at all may be chal- 
lenged; or the composition of the jury, or the mode of its or- 
ganization, or the pleadings of the opposite party, in whole or in 
part, or the sufficiency of process and service, or the competency 
of witnesses, or of any testimony offered. All this, and much 
more, without any assignable limit, may be challenged in any 
and every case. The only moral conditions necessarily involved 
are that any challenge made should be made in good faith, and 
for the purpose of raising a real, not a frivolous or mere sham 
question, and that the motive of challenge should be, not to trifle, 
vex or delay, but to conduct real business with business direct- 
ness and dispatch. To filibuster in Court is not less immoral 
than to filibuster in Congress or the Legislature. 

Inasmuch as verification must take place or no decision could 
be made, there must be a verifying force lodged somewhere; 
either with the Court, in which event it would merge in the de- 
ciding force, and make one force with two functions; or away 
from the Court, in which event it would have to be committed 
to the parties, one or both, or to some outside custody. Sup- 
posing it to be placed with the Court, would it be to the interest 
of justice that the Court should verify but one side of the case? 
Would it not be desirable to discover all the truth, whether of 
fact, or of law, on both sides? And, in searching for evidence 
by which to establish truth of fact or truth of law, would not the 
Court work with equal diligence, and with its utmost diligence, 
to protect the rights of both parties, trusting to this very process 
for reaching the proper knowledge on which to base the ulti- 
mate decision? On the supposition of the verifying force being 
in the hands of strangers — that is, of persons other than the 



82 A MEMORIAL OF 

parties, would not the Court desire, and the interest of justice 
demand, that the custodians of the force should use it to bring 
out and establish the whole truth on both sides? For obvious 
reasons, the burden of collecting the raw materials of fact and 
law, and of verifying cases, is not put upon the Courts ; and for 
sufficient reasons, whether obvious or not, strangers are not pre- 
ferred by the law to the parties for this purpose. Suppose, then, 
the verifying force, to be lodged with one of the parties, is its 
use by one better for the interest of justice than its use by both? 
Will one of them better present the whole case? or is it less im- 
portant that the Court should look to the truth on both sides 
when the parties are in charge of the verifying machinery, than 
if the Court itself or a stranger were in charge of it? 

On the contrary, every one who has presided on the bench, 
and many, if not all, who have served as jurors in litigated cases, 
know well how vital it is to "hear from the other side." If only 
one party is to be heard in verification, which shall it be, the one 
that has justice or the one that lacks it? And until verification 
is complete, how is it to be known which has it and which lacks 
it? Is the lost to be found before search, and the search made 
after the finding? Unless the justice of the given case were al- 
ready known, the verifying force could not be lodged solely 
along with it or solely away from it ; and were it already known, 
there would be no need for verification at all. On principle, then, 
the law wisely divides the verifying force into two opposite 
forces, and commits one of them to each party. The law does 
this knowing that parties are selfish, and that even in a contest 
about justice, their activity will not be for the sake of justice, 
but for the sake of interest — the interest they have in justice as 
they understand it, or claim it to be. The scheme of the law for 
discovering what it really is, is a combination of three forces: 
two verifying and one deciding; two antagonistic and one neu- 
tral; two selfish and one disinterested. The parties work ad- 
versely for a prize; the Court works indifferently between them 
for a principle — the principle according to which the prize is to 
be awarded. The Court finds the principle, if at all, by witness- 
ing, guiding and governing the contention, and by studying its 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 83 

verified results. In such a struggle, it is helpful to the Court 
and advantageous to justice that all the strength and all the 
weakness of both sides should be made manifest. Each party 
can well be trusted to show his own strength, but not his own 
weakness; his adversary will expose that much better. To get 
the full benefit of this principle of human nature, the range of 
verification permitted by the law is as follows : Either party 
may verify all he can, and hinder his adversary as much as he 
can from verifying anything; but he can neither verify nor hin- 
der by violating justice of procedure, nor by the use of false- 
hood in either of its forms — that is, neither by concealed fabri- 
cation, nor unwarranted suppression. He must act in good faith 
to the law, to the Court and to the adversary, and commit no 
breach of veracity. 

Some meritorious cases, indeed many, are lost in passing 
through the justice of procedure; but they are all justly lost, 
provided the rules of procedure have been correctly applied to 
them. That a just debt is unrecognized, a just title defeated, or 
a guilty man acquitted, is no evidence that justice has not been 
done by the Court or the jury. It may be the highest evidence 
that justice has been done, for it is perfectly just not to enforce 
payment of a just debt, not to uphold a just title, not to convict 
a guilty man, if the debt, or the title, or the guilt be not verified. 
It is unjust to do justice by doing injustice. A just discovery 
cannot be made by an unjust search. An end not attainable by 
just means is not attainable at all; ethically, it is an impossible 
end. Courts cannot do justice of substance except by and 
through justice of procedure. They must not reach justice of 
substance by violating justice of procedure. They must realize 
both, if they can, but if either has to fail, it must be justice of 
substance, for without justice of procedure Courts cannot know, 
nor be made to know, what justice of substance is, or which 
party ought to prevail. As well might a man put out his eyes 
in order to see better, as for a Court to stray from justice of 
procedure in order to administer justice of substance. 

Where there is a case pending in any Court the justice of 
procedure is absolutely certain, not for one party but for both. 



84 A MEMORIAL OF 

The possibility of mistake in administration does not impair that 
certainty. To the extent of the truth directly involved in pro- 
cedure, there is some truth indubitably on either side, and would 
be were there no formal issue on the justice of substance made 
up, or intended to be made up. Though it were admitted that a 
party is entitled to a judgment in his favor, he has no right to 
have it without bringing suit to obtain it, nor without that meas- 
ure of verification which the rules of procedure prescribe. The 
admission of his right to it might serve his purpose for verifica- 
tion, but not without using it to make a verified case. No Court 
will or ought to render a judgment on any unverified case, 
though the degree of verification may be as slight, and the means 
of it as various, as the law may please to ordain. There can be 
no doubt of the morality of obstructing a party in doing by law 
what he has no right to do. It follows that at least some of the 
truth (and if some, why not all?) may be suggested in Court in 
behalf of either party. There is no better legal right to prevail 
on a just cause of action without verifying it than on an unjust 
cause of action; and without a legal right to prevail there is no 
right at all. A Court has never in this world knowingly ren- 
dered a judgment on any right except a legal right, and never 
will. In so far as moral rights and legal rights are the same, 
morality is law ; and, because it is law, not because it is morality, 
Courts administer it. For all mere moral rights which have 
never been converted into legal rights, the only tribunal on this 
earth is conscience, reinforced in some degree by the retribu- 
tions, physical and moral, pointed to by the boys' maxim that 
"cheating luck never thrives." Where the law does not adopt 
morality it takes care not to raise any direct conflict with it. 
There is no law obliging anybody to worship idols, to take the 
Divine name in vain, to violate the Sabbath, to kill, to steal, to 
bear false witness; nor is there any law forbidding the payment 
of honest debts, or the practice of charity. Were there any such, 
no person, whether as party or counsel, could aid in enforcing it. 
But the law is not immoral because it does not prohibit the 
worship of idols, and were a person indicted in our Courts for 
practicing such worship, it would not be immoral to defend him, 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 85 

there being no law to punish. In like manner, were there no law 
against stealing except the moral law, human Courts could not 
inflict punishment, and it would not be wrong to defend. And 
the same rule would hold in regard to any other part of the 
Decalogue. Direct conflict with moral law being excluded from 
human law, right and wrong in Court are determined by the 
legal, not by the moral element, and the Court, the parties and the 
counsel must conform to that understanding. This does not cut 
off or impair the moral remedy or any voluntary action conform- 
ing to it. The law does not forbid or hinder the performance 
of mere moral duty ; it simply declines, in some cases, to enforce 
it as a legal duty. The distinction is world-wide between for- 
bidding a duty and not furnishing a remedy to compel its per- 
formance. The remedy of nature, or of providence, so far as 
this world is concerned, for inducing compliance with moral 
obligations, is not compulsory but voluntary. The conscience is 
not forced, but left free to do or not. Just so does the law treat 
mere moral duties. 

To realize the exact relation of counsel to the truth and 
justice of a litigated case, we are to remember that the law can 
make no offer of justice to any suitor except upon terms of pro- 
cedure ; and it can make no offer at all of pure, absolute, infal- 
lible justice, but only of such practical justice as is attainable by 
means of procedure. It allows each litigant to have his own 
counsel, but cannot allow the same counsel to appear for both 
parties. Where there is real forensic contest, it would be as 
inconsistent for one lawyer to manage both sides as for one gen- 
eral to command both armies in a battle. No lawyer is ever 
employed for a whole case ; he is employed for a part of it only, 
to-wit, his client's side; and thus, he neither represents nor is 
permitted to represent the whole truth or the whole justice of 
the case, but so much only as will make for his client's interest 
in that controversy. His client is in Court for a selfish purpose, 
that is, to serve his interest, and has employed a lawyer at his 
own expense to help him, and for nothing else. The lawyer's 
attitude towards any truth and justice which are adverse to his 
client's interest is hostile so long as they are unverified, and after 



86 A MEMORIAL OF 

their verification it is one of vigilant police, lest by combining 
with error, or otherwise, they should damage the truth and jus- 
tice of which he has the care. So they do as little hurt as pos- 
sible to his client's interest, he has no concern with them — no 
more than if he were not employed in the case. He can see them 
perish without compunction, for they are not in his keeping ; 
they are not his wards. A mere bystander may interfere for 
their rescue or preservation sooner than he, for the most he can 
do for his client's adversary is to be neutral; he dare not render 
him active service. 

The law does not undertake to recognize, as truth and justice 
of substance, anything unless it is made to appear with due legal 
certainty. There is no function of counsel more important than 
that of seeing to the mode and measure of proof. So long as 
truth and justice are open to legal doubt, though they may be 
certain to the individual mind of the counsel, he may urge their 
want of standing in Court; and he has no business with their 
standing outside, not even in his own mind. All the weak places 
in hostile evidence should be diligently searched for, found out 
and exposed. A lawyer who lacks the critical faculty, or the 
industry, energy or coolness needful to make it efficient, will 
often mistake error for truth. A large part of professional work 
is criticism. But mere quibble or cavil is beneath contempt, 
except when due to that rare order of mind which thinks a pun 
is a point for solemn adjudication by the Supreme Court. 

The truth or the justice of a case, as a whole, is not upon the 
conscience of counsel for either of the parties. Such a burden 
would be inconsistent with the very work appointed for him to 
do. To assign him to one of the parties exclusively unfits him 
for taking upon him any sort of a burden, moral or legal, co-ex- 
tensive with the whole case. If such were his function he ought 
to appear as amicus curiae in behalf of the disinterested force, 
and form no alliance with the interested force. 

As practitioner at the Bar, counsel is a part of the system of 
remedy, no part of the system of substantial rights. His first 
concern is with the system to which he belongs, and through 
which alone he is related to any right or justice outside of it. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 87 

He is part of a machine, helping to keep the other parts in 
order and to operate the whole. What would impair the machine 
he cannot do; neither can he do anything except with the ma- 
chine. The necessity of procedure, and that alone, accounts for 
and justifies his existence. Were Courts inspired, or did they 
know intuitively what they learn through procedure, he would 
be relegated to his law-office, there to be consulted and give 
advice on rights of substance and the modes of their acquisition, 
preservation and transfer. His professional life would be retired 
and silent. 

If the relation between justice of procedure and justice of 
substance be as defined in the foregoing paragraphs of this 
address, the overwhelming importance of procedure ought to be 
realized, both in the professional mind and the public mind. To 
secure a wise and judicious system, the one best adapted to work 
out justice of substance with certainty, celerity and cheapness, 
ought to be an object of anxious endeavor with the law-making, 
the law-administering and the law-abiding elements of society. 
Only the law-breaking element can possibly be benefited by a bad 
system, or one that results in temporary failure of ultimate jus- 
tice by delay, or its permanent failure by erroneous decision. 

It is doubtful whether lawyers, in general, estimate justice of 
procedure at its true value; and it is certain that the public, in 
general, do not estimate it at all ; they do not think of it ; they 
rarely hear it mentioned ; they scarcely know of its exist- 
ence. When they speak of justice, they mean justice of 
substance, and that alone. With their attention concentrated 
exclusively upon it, they fail to remember, perhaps they do 
not consciously know, that there is a justice of justice. When 
justice of substance is wounded or slain, they think injus- 
tice must have done the mischief; and did you tell them 
that it was done justly — that injustice had no part in it, 
they would think you mocked them with paradox. They know 
that some forms of good may be defeated by other forms of 
good, for this is constantly occurring throughout all human expe- 
rience. No day passes without some ends, good and proper in 
themselves, having to be sacrificed, not because they are out of 



88 A MEMORIAL OF 

the reach of means, but because they cannot be accomplished b}' 
any good means at our command ; and in the pursuit of all ends 
we are confined by God's law as well as by man's law to good 
means. We cannot do wrong to serve right; and the doing of 
one right thing that we must do is often the only obstacle to 
doing another right thing that we would do. All this is plain to 
all people, but that it applies to justice as well as to other good, is 
what they fail to realize; and yet its application to justice is no 
less certain and no less obvious. Justice of procedure consists in 
abiding by and faithfully administering the rules of procedure, 
whatever they may be. This a Court must do, and what it 
would do is to ascertain and administer justice of substance 
by this means. Here, then, is a must do and a would do ; 
and the doing of the must may, in certain cases, be the 
very thing, and the only thing, that hinders the doing of 
the would. Hence, justice done in adhering to appointed 
means may defeat the very end and the only end which 
the means were intended to accomplish ; and so justice, in- 
stead of being the saviour, may be the executioner of justice. 
It is the business of the Legislature to appoint means — that is, 
to mould procedure, and prescribe its rules. And in doing so, 
if not wisely done, the means will not only fail of their end in 
numerous instances, but be themselves the cause of the failure. 
And this, at present, is the condition, in some respects, of pro- 
cedure in Georgia. Let procedure be put upon a basis of prin- 
ciple, and modern common sense, not the common sense that saw 
truth as it was before the time of railroads, telegraphs and tele- 
phones, but the common sense of to-day — like that of merchants, 
bankers, common carriers, even of the newsboys — that sees truth 
as it is, heated by steam and hurried by electricity. 

There is a clamor abroad for justice, for justice of substance, 
and legislators, the Courts, the Bar and the people may prepare 
to administer it on a system of procedure adequate to modern 
demand, or else to witness, in stolid imbecility, attempts, more 
and more numerous, more and more desperate, to clutch it by 
the rude hand of violence. Of what avail is truth at the Bar 
when truth itself is obliged, by a false or obsolete system of pro- 
cedure, to delay or defeat substantial justice? 



LAW AS A RULE OF FEELING. 

A paper read by Judge Bleckley at the sixth annual meeting 

of the Georgia Bar Association, 

Savannah, May 9th, 1889. 



Reprinted from the Annual Report. 



LAW AS A RULE OF FEELING. 

Positive law, as distinguished from natural, is the mandate 
of one will to another will. It is thus a relation between two 
wills — a superior and inferior, the one foreign, the other domes- 
tic. Every scheme of positive law has in it two elements — pre- 
cepts and sanctions. The preceptive element points out what is 
required, and exacts compliance with the requirement; the sanc- 
tion element declares the consequence of non-compliance. This 
consequence, in civil law, is usually some coercive measure to 
enforce, either compliance, specifically, or compensation in lieu 
thereof; in criminal law it is the infliction of punishment. The 
moral, and sometimes human law, extends its sanction so as to 
declare also the consequence of compliance with the requirement, 
which consequence is reward. By this duplicate sanction is 
established what is called a system of rewards and punishments — 
reward for obedience to law, punishment for disobedience. 

Next we notice government — using the term not as compre- 
hending the law-making power, but only the agencies of admin- 
istering law. 

The functions of government, in order to cover the whole 
field of positive law, must include two sets of administrative 
acts ; one set applying the precepts, the other the sanctions of the 
legal system. To apply precepts to conduct, is possible only 
while the conduct is in progress. After an act or omission is 
past, no law can be applied to it. You can only deal with conse- 
quences, and these can in no way reach back to the vanished act 
or omission itself. It follows that the administrator of positive 
law in its precepts is not the magistrate, but the party to whom 
the law is addressed. The magistrate administers only the sanc- 
tions of the law. There can be no breach or violation of law 
otherwise than by maladministration. A law which cannot be 
administered in its precepts by the party, cannot justly be admin- 
istered in its sanctions by the magistrate ; in other words, it is 
tyrannical — an unjust law. 



92 A MEMORIAL OF 

What the domestic will cannot do or cause to be done, the 
foreign will cannot visit with penalties for leaving undone. 
Whatever is not subject to the domestic will is not subject to the 
foreign will in the exercise of authority over the domestic will. 
In so far as we are not subject to our own will, we are not sub- 
ject to the positive law of another will. What is not in the 
sphere of self-government is not in the sphere of positive gov- 
ernment at all. In its last analysis, therefore, all government is 
based on the power and duty of self-government. Relatively to 
law, all personal merit is in faithful, and all personal demerit is 
in unfaithful, self-government. Hence, in philosophic politics 
there is room for an order of nobility — the order of virtue. 
Men who govern themselves correctly are noble in the true sense. 

We know that the affections are under natural law. Let us 
see how they stand related to positive law. It is plain that they 
could be put under precept, if precept were separated from sanc- 
tion. It would do no violence to their nature to ply them with 
precepts, counsel, persuasion, entreaty or exhortation; but to 
include them in the double sanction of rewards and punishments 
looks at first view like resort to bribery and terror. Coercive 
machinery applied to love, gratitude, magnanimity, charity, is 
suggestive of a contradiction like that between force and free- 
dom. My actions may be regulated by your will, but my affec- 
tions seem subject to no will whatsoever, not even to my own. 
It may be thought, I cannot love whom you will, nor whom I 
will, but only those to whom my affections spontaneously incline. 
True, my will, and even yours, may influence in some degree my 
inclination, but not (it may be contended) by giving it a law. 
Legislating for it might probably have a contrary effect to that 
desired. To try is certainly within my power, but not unfre- 
quently the more we try the less we succeed; the shadow of the 
will seems to hinder the sunshine of affection from bursting out. 
There seems to be a principle of spontaneity in the recesses of 
our emotional nature, delicate and sensitive, easily wounded, and 
apt to resent any encroachment of the will (foreign or domestic) 
as obtrusive and impertinent. Offer of reward and threat of pun- 
ishment seem to put love, charity, gratitude, etc., under two 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 93 

tyrants, hope and fear. Can this be done without subjugating them, 
— without depriving them of a part of their essential nature ? 
Do you not destroy them in proportion as you succeed in tempt- 
ing them by reward or coercing them by penalty? In so far as 
they are accessible to the motives of pay and punishment, are 
they not something else rather than themselves? Is love, com- 
plicated with hope and fear as conditions of its existence, love 
at all ? 

Though it is obvious that our emotions are less amenable to 
law than our faculties of action, for the reason that they are not 
so immediately and directly related to the will ; yet that they are 
related to the will in a mediate and indirect way, and therefore 
amenable to law in some degree, is beyond all doubt. The dif- 
ference is that the will can move upon the faculties of action in 
straight lines, whereas it can approach the emotions by curves 
only. And it may be observed also, that where the office of the 
will is not to prompt or excite the emotions, but to restrain them 
or keep them from rising, the volitional influence is almost as 
direct as it is over conduct in general, especially where there is 
time for deliberation. A law not to love or hate, in a degree 
beyond the average degree of these passions, would be more 
easily complied with than one to love or hate affirmatively, in a 
degree to which we are not inclined by nature. Still, by the use 
of means and by a process of stimulation and cultivation, we 
have the power to comply with any reasonable law exacting the 
exercise of love, charity and all the elevated emotions, and there- 
fore any such a law, whether human or divine, is not, in itself, 
tyrannical or unjust. 

St. Francis de Sales, when asked how to love, said the best 
and easiest way to love was to love. He added that we learn to 
speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to 
work by working, and just so we learn to love by loving. In 
the exercise of all the virtues, there should be as much concen- 
tration of the mind on the object and as little self-regard as pos- 
sible. Take the case of charity. Active charity is a sort of 
commercial transaction, with the commercial motive absent. We 
give something for nothing, and yet we receive as well as give. 



94 A MEMORIAL OF 

But the moment we allow the value received, or to be received, 
to rise into distinct consciousness and become a motive for our 
action, the moral nature of the action changes; it becomes sel- 
fish or partly selfish, instead of being, as without this it would 
have been, wholly benevolent. Indeed, one of the conditions to 
exalted virtue of any kind is to keep the self-interest that attends 
upon virtue out of consciousness. Self-consciousness is the 
Aaron's rod that swallows up all the not-self that comes in its 
way. For this reason, amongst others, it has been made a ques- 
tion whether certain organized charity-work is to be encouraged, 
or even tolerated. I allude to that form of organization which 
consists of a president, a secretary, a committee, a hall and a 
ball, with indefinite refreshments. 

In the study of my subject, I have been surprised to find so 
little law on love before marriage. In none of the books do I 
see any command to love the young ladies or the young gentle- 
men of any age or generation. This is a sort of love that does 
not wait for orders. There is no conscription ; everybody volun- 
teers. Still, there is some law, for Cupid has a court and suits 
and suitors ; this implies law and lawyers ; but I have never 
practiced at this bar, except in one very difficult case, in which I 
was plaintiff as well as counsel. The law of the land leaves 
love affairs to proceed somewhat at haphazzard until they are 
about to be locked in wedlock. Then it helps the parties along 
by granting a license, and the church also interposes by sending 
a clergyman to assist in the final ceremony. 

This stage being passed, love before the fact changes into 
love after the fact, and the imperative "Thou shalt love" is in 
full force. 



After Judge Bleckley had concluded the reading of the fore- 
going, he spoke orally as follows : 

I have of deliberate purpose afforded you a specimen of a 
perfectly useless piece of work, desiring to call your attention to 
one quality which commends it, and that is brevity. Useless 
things are not to be put out of the world. We have in nature a 
perpetual example for mingling the useless with the useful, and 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 95 

no doubt there is a certain utility in the useless ; but what I want 
to impress upon you and myself is, that life is too short within 
which to do too much useless labor. There is certainly too much 
of it done. Waste work comprehends at least one-half of all 
work. My opinion is that two-thirds of the labor of lawyers and 
courts may be said to be wasted absolutely. Let us endeavor to 
reduce the useless work of the profession and of the bench to 
the minimum. 

I am gratified to see that uselessness has lately been intro- 
duced by the establishment of a periodical called "The Green 
Bag," into the literature of the law. I think there is a place for 
it. The title page to that periodical says it is a useless but en- 
tertaining magazine. This describes it, and one characteristic, 
I notice, belonging to most of its articles is, they are brief. If 
they were extended they would be useless, but not entertaining; 
they would be very tiresome. 

Gentlemen, it is a mistake to throw legal work into the hopper 
pell-mell. It is a mistake to do it, no matter what court you 
present yourselves in. A great part of your labor should be in 
keeping out work when your causes come to be tried, whether 
in a lower or a higher court. A great part of the most useful 
work you can do is to sift out all the irrevelant and all the 
unnecessary material that will collect about a lawsuit. When 
you go into court your standards are all abstract. Law is ab- 
straction; it is generality; it is a system of general rules for 
cases of each class. Your standards in any court, whether you 
are before the court alone, or before a court and jury, are all 
abstract. Bring in enough of the concrete case (all of it that 
touches the merits) to show how to apply the abstract rules of 
law to it. Then you have done your best. Let the concrete be 
so reduced in mass that you can readily apply the abstract to it. 
Avoid any hurtful condensation of the concrete, and hurtful 
expansion of it. One of the best methods of relieving the 
Supreme Court of the United States, intermediate courts, and 
all courts, would be for lawyers to do most of their work before 
they go to court; for them to eliminate from their records and 
the material of their cases all the irrelevant, all that can be spared 
without hazarding or impairing the merits. 



96 A MEMORIAL OF 

If the profession would do their best to condense their work 
and economize the labor of the courts, the courts could do the 
judicial work. There is bench force enough in this country to do 
its legal business, if the lawyers would do their part in reducing 
judicial labor. But how is this reform to be accomplished? 
Courts are powerless to reform anything without the co-opera- 
tion of the bar. The whole system of administering justice is a 
co-operative system. 

The bar and the bench must harmonize and work together. I 
would respectfully submit that lawyers have not understood the 
art of condensing work, condensing it sufficiently for courts to 
deal with it. The professional mind should seize upon this idea. 
Every time a line is written, ask yourselves if it is necessary to 
trouble the court with it. Ask if this can be dispensed with. Can 
I throw it away and not hurt my case? It will require labor. 
Everything valuable requires labor. Nothing is worth anything 
which does not cost work save what nature produces spon- 
taneously. 

I submit these considerations to you, and hope you will reflect 
upon them. I want to advocate no extreme policy, but I do 
think that a man who is ashamed to write a long letter unnec- 
essarily on business, ought to be unwilling to throw away his 
labor or that of anybody else in court. There is virtue in brev- 
ity of work. No business man writes a long business letter if 
he can write a brief one. Good business work must be condensed 
and abbreviated, just as good business communications are. If 
you will realize this and act upon it, you will profit by it your- 
selves, and I know it will be invaluable to others who have to 
co-operate with you in the outcome of your professional business. 



EMOTIONAL JUSTICE. 

An address delivered by Judge Bleckley at the ninth annual meeting 

of the Georgia Bar Association, 

Macon, June 1st, 1892. 



Reprinted from the Annual Report. 



EMOTIONAL JUSTICE. 

My subject is so weighty and important that I could rely 
upon it to engage your attention and command your interest, 
however crude or superficial my treatment of it might be. But 
I propose to discuss it carefully, though briefly. I shall say 
nothing which has not been well considered. I pledge my can- 
dor for the deliberate forethought of all my utterances on this 
occasion. 

Justice is nothing if not indifferent and impartial. All the 
passions, when aroused, are unfriendly to it ; they are all respect- 
ers of persons; the benevolent passions incline us to favoritism, 
the malevolent to a blind antagonism. To be indifferent means 
to be free, not only from prejudice, but from the influence of 
active emotions ; for active emotions sway the mind in this or 
that direction, and justice is so essentially rational that nothing 
but the dictates of reason can be heeded in rightly dealing with 
it. It is purely intellectual, and in no degree emotional. Ab- 
normal emotion is always a disturber. Even righteous indigna- 
tion and holy horror are impertinent intruders in an affair of 
justice. 

Emotional justice has no standing in the forum of right 
reason, and ought to have none anywhere. It should be so effec- 
tually overruled and discredited as to leave it without favor in 
public opinion or in private judgment. Unfortunately it has now 
two scenes of baleful activity; it works out of court, and in 
court. In Georgia, as in most of the States, we have two tribu- 
nals for the trial of high crimes and misdemeanors, the one de 
facto the other de jure; the one holding its frequent sessions 
outside, the other its stated sittings inside, of the law. The mob 
exercises concurrent jurisdiction with the jury; or rather, the 
mob makes its own selection of the most flagrant cases, draws 
to itself exclusive jurisdiction of these, and tolerates the jury 
in dealing with the rest. Sometimes, indeed, the mob forbears 






100 A MEMORIAL OF 

to interfere in the first instance, even where the case is of choice 
flavor, only reserving the supreme power of review over the ver- 
dict. A distasteful verdict is a powerful stimulant to mob emo- 
tion. Mobs of the kind I refer to act always under the provo- 
cation of real crimes, and generally under the provocation of 
crimes the most atrocious and detestable. Their victims, 
when they secure the right ones, suffer unjustly only because 
they are punished in violation of law, and by self-constituted 
agents who have no better right to inflict punishment on the 
guilty than on the innocent. It is conviction of guilt, not guilt 
itself, that warrants punishment. All men are equally exempt 
from punishment until guilt has been duly ascertained and 
declared. Nothing but authentic justice can be called public 
justice, or is public justice, either in law or in fact. 

It is true beyond question that mobs for the infliction of sum- 
mary justice on offenders, or supposed offenders, are composed 
chiefly of good citizens. Without this element, no such mob 
would or could exist. Mobs of bad men only would not violate 
law in the interest of law and order. None but the good do evil 
that good may abound. In so far as the public weal is a motive 
in the exercise of mob violence, the case is always one of good- 
ness acting under a mistake of duty. If that mistake could be 
prevented, there would be no mob. 

One of the most urgent needs of our time is an earnest, tem- 
perate, judicious and persistent remonstrance from the bench, 
the pulpit, the press and the rostrum, against emotional justice. 
That essential part of mob material which is composed of good 
citizens should be made to see and realize that while a mob may 
punish guilt, its members incur guilt, and that for every guilty 
person purged out of society by such means, two or more equally 
guilty are brought in. Nothing is more certain than that mob 
executions increase the criminal population of the State. The 
larger the mob and the more secure of immunity, the more crimi- 
nals are lodged in the bosom of society; and each man is no 
less guilty than if the crime of the whole mob had been com- 
mitted by himself alone. This is true both legally and morally. 
Murder is none the less wicked because perpetrated "by a crowd. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 101 

Nothing would be needed to convert a State into a colony of 
criminals but that its mobs should be large enough and numerous 
enough. Whoever is unwilling for the whole State to become a 
mob, ought to be unwilling to encourage or share in mob violence. 
Not only do good citizens, by converting themselves into a 
mob, multiply criminals, but they diminish the influence of the 
jury. The mob seizes on the capital prizes, those cases which 
count for most in impressing public opinion, and thus the awe 
which ought to be inspired by the jury is inspired chiefly by the 
mob. The influence of the mob waxes, while that of the jury 
wanes. The body which decides between guilt and innocence 
ought to be the most influential, the most feared and respected 
of any in society. No organization in or out of the court house 
should be so terrible to evil doers as a jury of twelve men ! No 
mob, even if composed of first-class citizens, ought to compete 
with the jury for repute in inflicting punishment on offenders. 
The jury alone should be conspicuous in the exercise of this 
high function in behalf of the public. Anything which assumes 
to be better, and tends to make itself bigger than the jury is out 
of place where trial by jury is an institution of the country, and 
forms the chief bulwark for the security of person and property. 
Society works by and through established institutions, and can 
work wisely and safely in no other way. To weaken or discredit 
these institutions is to enfeeble government and bring authority 
into contempt. If those whose zeal in behalf of the public hurries 
them into outbreak and bloody violence would expend their 
energy in aiding the officers of the law to discover evidence and 
prosecute malefactors, they would indeed be serviceable to the 
State. As helps and supports in upholding law and enforcing it, 
they might in a high degree be patriotic and useful. Instead of 
usurping the functions of the jury, they ought to endeavor to 
supply evidence and render the jury more efficient. If guilt has 
been proved to them, they know how to prove it to the jury; if 
it has not been proved, then they incur the awful responsibility 
of confounding guilt and innocence ; they take the dreadful risk 
of inflicting punishment on some who do not deserve it. Lately, 
in one of the lower counties of this State, the mob executed the 



102 A MEMORIAL OF 

wrong man, and the jury afterwards convicted the right one. 
Whatever serves to magnify and exalt the jury is in favor of the 
public interest. Not only do mobs defy the jury, they dwarf it 
and render it insignificant. 

But the law itself, as well as its institutions, is wounded and 
weakened by mob aggression. No people can be happy without 
that repose which is realized through a sentiment of respect for 
the law of the land. The law is that to which all alike must look 
for security and protection; and a silent, continuous and widely- 
diffused respect in the public mind for law, as something to be 
obeyed and observed by all, is more influential in preserving 
peace, good order and a feeling of restful confidence throughout 
society than anything else. Where mobs rage and violate the 
law by committing murder at will and with impunity, the public 
mind must and will be anxious and disturbed, and the greatest 
apprehension must be entertained by all intelligent and thought- 
ful people. This is to live in the shadow of a threatened storm, 
and miss the blessings of peace in a time of peace. 

Mobs have no mission, and can render no reason for their 
existence. Nor would they exist if we could silence their well- 
meaning, but deluded, advocates and apologists. Especially 
would it be serviceable to alter the tone and teaching of those 
public journals which confound the mob with the people, and 
treat some, if not all, instances of mob violence as cases in which 
the people act in their own behalf and take justice into their own 
hands. Nothing can be more manifest than that a mob, as such, 
is not the people as a political society, nor even any part of the 
same. To become a mob and do its work, those who compose it 
must, for the time being, secede from organized society, outrage 
its most fundamental principles, and trample on its institutions. 
If society has any law or ordinance that has been proclaimed 
throughout the civilized world, and that everywhere prevails as 
binding authority, it is that no man shall be condemned without 
a trial, and that no trial can be had save through governmental 
agency and in some pre-established method. Such rules are im- 
posed by society for its own observance as well as for observance 
by all its members. Neither society as an aggregate, nor any 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 103 

number of its individuals, can take justice in hand, or have any 
hand in justice, except by the means and in the manner prescribed 
by law. Were it known by actual count that all the people of 
both sexes and all ages had assembled and combined by unani- 
mous consent to perpetrate an act of violence upon the worst of 
criminals, the case would not be one in which the people had 
taken justice in their own hands, but one in which, in violation 
of their own laws, they had assumed to inflict injustice in the 
name of justice. The people have no hands for unlawful work. 
Justice is in the hands of the people only when it is in the hands 
of their organized tribunals. In such matters, the people cannot 
act otherwise than through their legitimate agents. By appoint- 
ing these agents and committing all punitive power into their 
hands, to be exercised in the name of the people and for the 
good of the people, the people renounced completely and forever 
all right and all power to transact such business in person, or by 
means of their own direct intervention. But the truth is, that 
mobs are never composed of more than a small fragment or frac- 
tion of the population. Their arrogant assumption of being the 
people, or representing them, is entirely fanciful and fictitious. 
The people neither want such representatives nor could have them 
if they desired. Between the people and the mob there is no 
privity, and none can arise or be established. Suppose a mob to 
assemble in the Capitol and, as the people or as representatives 
of the people, to assume and exercise the power of legislation. 
It would be no more absurd or impossible for a mob to usurp 
legislative functions and make their exercise legitimate than to 
usurp judicial functions and exercise them legitimately. Should 
a mob pass and promulgate a statute, or a body of statutes, would 
it be said that the people had taken the making of their laws into 
their own hands? What journal or newspaper would venture to 
speak thus of such a lawless method of making laws? It ought 
to be deemed equally inaccurate and equally mischievous to speak 
in analagous terms touching the administration of law by mob 
agency. 

I exhort and adjure all good citizens to co-operate with the 
Executive and the Judiciary in staying quickly that violent jus- 



104 A MEMORIAL OF 

tice which is administered by mobs — that wild and lawless 
justice which is rife in our unhappy country! Children already 
born may live to see mobs mobbed; large mobs may execute 
smaller ones; mobs of one race may rise up against mobs of 
another race; mobs of bad men may become as numerous and 
more terrible than mobs of good men; brute force, through a 
long and bloody period of disorder, may reign supreme ! 

I have reached now the immediate and main purpose of this 
address. It may be asked, why should one speak to a body of 
lawyers on mob law? Are not lawyers everywhere conservative 
and law-abiding? Save in a few rare instances, one of them a 
late deplorable instance which shocked and humiliated the whole 
country, has any American lawyer of high or low repute been 
known to lead or take part in mob violence? To the honor of 
the profession be it said, there is virtually no mob material within 
its ranks. Not only so, but of all orders of men, excepting not 
even the reverend clergy, lawyers are the most unanimous and 
persistent in condemning and opposing lawless violence as a 
substitute for public justice. For this there are several causes, 
the chief one being that the whole spirit and training, as well as 
the interest of the profession, incline them in favor of regular 
and orderly administration of justice through the institutions of 
society and according to the forms of law. To aid in such work 
is their vocation. For the method of carrying on this vocation, 
they alone are responsible. In so far as that method tends to 
infuse undue emotion into the administration of justice, it is 
pernicious and reprehensible. The advocate while engaged in 
addressing the jury for this object and with this effect, is a sort 
of mob orator, and a direct promoter of emotional justice. The 
great danger to justice in court, as well as out of court, is pas- 
sion. A jury swayed by passion is a moral mob. Emotional 
verdicts of acquittal rendered by excited juries are perhaps more 
numerous than mob executions ; and between these two forms 
of emotional justice, the first often bears the relation of cause to 
the second. Some culprits are dispatched without a trial because 
several others have been tried in vain. This reason is a lame 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 105 

and impotent one, but its existence as a fact cannot be ignored. 
The work of lawyers at the bar thus causes, consequentially and 
undesignedly, lawless violence out of court. Let lawyers cease 
to arouse and play upon the sympathies and antipathies of juries, 
and the mob will soon be deprived of its most plausible excuse 
for insolent intervention and bloody activity in affairs of justice. 
There is no sounder justice administered in any country than by 
justices of the peace in Georgia. These magistrates generally 
act coolly and dispassionately, although they try questions of 
fact as well as of law. They seldom fail to reach substantial 
justice. Juries would be equally successful were they not lashed 
into undue excitement by the appeals of over-zealous counsel. 
Emotional justice takes even a wider range in court than out of 
court. Mobs confine themselves to criminal practice, but the 
emotional lawyer has cases on the civil as well as on the criminal 
side of the court. When he has a woman for a client and a cor- 
poration for a defendant, he is irresistible. The jury, through 
their inflamed passions, will respond to his appeals by awarding 
the highest amount of damages which their over-heated con- 
sciences will sanction. This happens not seldom when, according 
to law and right, the verdict ought to be for the defendant. To 
lynch corporations, or any other class of suitors, by exorbitant 
or unfounded verdicts, is to give mob spirit sway in the jury box. 
That the emotional stalwart has not long ago ceased to be extant 
on the forensic scene is one of the marvels of practical jurispru- 
dence. The atmosphere of a court-room should always be serene, 
so that the mental processes of court and jury may go on delib- 
erately and tranquilly. But too often an emotional cyclone sweeps 
through and carries the jury away. Counsel, by the prevailing 
practice, are permitted to excite the jury at will. If the specta- 
tors also become excited and manifest it by applause, the applause 
will be a contempt of court, and the enthusiastic individuals who 
applaud, if they can be identified, will be reprimanded and per- 
haps fined; but the eloquent counsel who produced the excite- 
ment will not even be admonished to forbear from launching 
out in another burst of emotional eloquence the next moment. 
This is something like punishing people who take poison, without 



106 A MEMORIAL OF 

so much as reproving those who administer it. The eloquence 
to which I allude is not that which emits light, but that which 
emits heat only, or much heat with little light. Intellectual elo- 
quence is no less legitimate in court than anywhere else. It is 
emotional eloquence which is pernicious; its unfailing tendency 
being to pervert or prevent justice. It is said that this order of 
eloquence at the bar has much declined, and is still declining. 
That it ought to go out and disappear entirely, as something 
wholly incompatible with the functions and purposes of courts 
of justice, is absolutely certain. Counsel should be called to 
order no less promptly for attempting to excite the jury, than 
for misstating the evidence or for asserting facts as to which the 
evidence is silent. The work of all courts is mere business. The 
great mass of forensic business is concerned with two questions, 
first, whether the alleged wrong, public or private, has been com- 
mitted ; and secondly, if it has, what redress is due. When both 
of these questions are correctly decided, justice is realized; if 
either is decided incorrectly, there is a failure of justice in the 
given instance. In no conceivable case can a right solution be 
aided by exciting the jury. On the contrary, coolness and calm- 
ness at all stages of the trial will always be favorable to truth 
and justice. In court, as well as everywhere else, we want intel- 
lectual methods that are clean and conscientious. We have 
learned to respect the rights of person and of property ; what we 
ought to learn is that the rights of mind ought to be equally 
respected. These rights should never be encroached upon by the 
practice of fraud. Sophistry is a fraud on reason through the 
reason; pathetic declamation is a fraud on reason through the 
passions. It surely is not the duty of counsel to influence a jury 
by such means; and if not their duty, it ought not to be their 
privilege. When we want to realize vividly in our own minds the 
sentiment of justice, or the idea of justice, or the conditions of 
justice, we do not endeavor to excite our passions, but to think 
coolly and deliberately. Why should we not deal with other 
minds in the same way ? Emotion in its normal state is harmless ; 
it offers no hindrance to justice. But when excited and inflamed, 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 107 

it is mental intoxication — it unbalances the reason and unfits 
the mind for safe and trustworthy deliberation. 

With less emotional justice inside of the courthouse, there 
would be less, perhaps none at all, on the outside. No greater 
good could be done than by withdrawing emotion as a force 
from the administration of justice. 



WISDOM. 

A paper written by Judge Bleckley and published 

in the Southern Law Review, 

Atlanta, January, 1902. 



Reprinted by permission of Judge Wm. R. Hammond of Atlanta, 
former editor and publisher Southern Law Review. 






WISDOM. 

What is wisdom? Is it knowledge? Is it virtue? It is 
knowledge and virtue combined; the two together constitute 
wisdom. Knowledge is its light and virtue is its heat, just as 
bright rays and warm rays mingle in the sunbeam. Knowledge 
alone is too cold; virtue alone is too dim. To be wise we must 
discern truth and love duty. To know is not enough ; to feel is 
not enough ; we must both know aright and feel aright, and from 
this right knowledge and right feeling we must send forth a 
life-stream of right conduct. 

Wisdom is of many degrees. In its highest state it is omnis- 
cience united with perfect love. Any state attainable by man 
is far lower than this; yet even man, when liberally endowec 
by nature and placed under favorable conditions in life, ma} 
become very wise. A few great names in the history of tht 
world are examples of this pre-eminence. Mere human wisdom 
does not include or pre-suppose a knowledge of all truth. If it 
did no mortal could be wise. To be eminently wise much knowl- 
edge is requisite; but a safe, practical standard of wisdom can 
be reached with a very moderate stock of knowledge, if of the 
right kind. 

Indeed, there is a sort of wise-headedness that seems like 
instinct. Some persons are blessed with this peculiar faculty, 
and often surprise us by making their way discreetly with a most 
scanty store of general knowledge. They seem to acquire 
instantly what they need and precisely when they need it. This 
power of rapid acquisition is with them a substitute for accumu- 
lating and storing up in advance, just as a man with plenty of 
money to buy his corn and bacon as he needs them has no occa- 
sion to fill his crib or smoke-house. No doubt there is such a 
thing as a special genius for wisdom, just as there is for mathe- 
matics or music — that here and there are wise men who have 
not become so by previous systematic study in the ordinary way. 



112 A MEMORIAL OF 

As all knowledge is not essential to wisdom, and as some per- 
sons can be or become wise without any prescribed or regular 
course of study, what element or class of knowledge does wisdom 
necessarily involve? I answer the knowledge of proportion; the 
faculty of comparing two or more things, thoughts or subjects, 
and of settling their relative rank, not mistaking the less for the 
greater, the unimportant for the important, or the less important 
for the more important. 

The grand practical office of wisdom is to guide choice and 
govern conduct; and to choose you must distinguish, and to 
choose wisely you must distinguish truly and according to rela- 
tive rank and real value. But as wisdom is not knowledge only, 
but includes virtue as well as knowledge, it is not enough to 
discern what choice ought to be made ; the next step is to make 
that choice and carry it into effect. To ascertain how and what 
to choose is barren work, unless it is followed in due season by 
choosing accordingly ; and a choice made is still barren so long 
as it remains unexecuted. 

Two or three of the most important dictates of true wisdom 
may be formulated thus: Never choose evil rather than good; 
never sacrifice a greater good to a less ; never shun a less evil at 
the expense of a greater. Whoever supposes that it is ever wise 
to do wrong is mistaken. Wisdom and rectitude cannot be at 
variance. Our true interest always coincides with our real duty. 
If they appear separate sometimes, the appearance is delusive 
and the result of our short-sightedness. Could we see clear 
through to the end we should be in no doubt upon the subject. 
Moreover, our real duty always coincides with sound morality. 
There can be no conflict between moral principle and each 
instance of correct moral practice. As certainly as the whole 
includes all the parts, so certainly does general morality compre- 
hend all particular morality. "We must fight the devil with fire" 
is a false maxim, and would be most pernicious if it were believed 
in and applied every time it is quoted. Fire is the devil's own 
element — his own weapon, and he can handle it with more effect 
against us than we can against him. The true rule of warfare 
on out part is to fight the devil with virtue. If we cannot over- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 113 

come him in that way the battle is hopeless. Why should we 
despair of virtue or lose confidence in it as a means, whatever 
may be the work in hand ? If we have a worthy end, why 
should not all our means be worthy too? Let us never lose faith 
in virtue, but regard it as a force which, though it may be 
obstructed by vile practices and temporarily thwarted, can never 
be defeated except by the treachery of its own friends. If we 
live in a time of cheating and swindling, must we cheat and 
swindle too in self-defence? God forbid. If others steal from 
us and escape punishment, must we steal from them? Never, 
never. On the contrary, the worse others are and the fewer 
those who are uncontaminated by their example the truer and 
more faithful should that few be, for otherwise all would be- 
come utterly vile and the very seed of goodness would perish 
and be lost. And I will venture to add, at the risk of meeting 
with some dissent, that there is the same reason for rigid hon- 
esty in politics and public life, in elections and with electors and 
elected, as in ordinary private business or personal conduct. The 
political devil is no more to be fought, with fire without terrible 
consequences to the best interests of the community than is the 
devil of avarice, or of envy, or of ambition, or any other of the 
numerous devils which infest society. 

In my humble opinion, whether considered as a question of 
policy or of principle, the right way to deal with any devil what- 
soever is not to put yourself under another devil of the same 
sort, or even of a different sort, and fling fire from one devil's 
host to another, but take the field under some good captain and 
fight as valiantly as you can with true and pure weapons. You 
may not win the first battle, or the second, or the tenth, but when 
you do prevail it will be a real victory, and not a sham, and above 
all, you will still deserve success, and be at least as good after 
the contest as you were when it opened; and your example will 
not have misled others, nor corrupted the public mind and seared 
the public conscience. I speak from a standpoint quite out- 
side of politics and party lines, and what I say may be too vis- 
ionary and theoretic for practical working, but if we have reached 
a stage of degeneracy where virtue has ceased to be practical, 



114 A MEMORIAL OF 

and where vice and fraud are forces of such potency that they 
can be met and resisted only by forces of like kind, I think wis- 
dom is already a lost art, that we are on the confines of perdition, 
and that ere long we shall tumble over the wall and be swallowed 
up in the pit. 

The really inexpedient and non-practical is the wrong, the 
wicked, the impure, the unworthy; the really practical is the 
right, the righteous, the virtuous, the worthy and exalted. The 
failure of wrong may not be speedy; it may be afar off; but 
fail it must and will in the end. To be false is to fail sometime 
and somewhere, and wrong is false. It is failure in its very 
nature, and cannot conduct to permanent and enduring success. 
Such success as it meets with is but one of the steps to its final 
catastrophe, and either expedites its fall or serves to render that 
fall more overwhelming and complete. 

So much for the choice of good in preference to evil; but a 
much nicer problem is presented when the question is between 
a major good and a minor one. We have passions which solicit 
us strongly to this or that present good, though it may be tem- 
porary and of small value. What is near at hand attracts us 
more powerfully than what is remote and apparently uncertain. 
That "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" has become 
a proverb, and is repeated over and over by thousands and 
probably by millions. The proverb means that a desirable thing 
in actual possession equals in value two similar things which 
we have not yet secured and which may probably never be in our 
power. It teaches that good is not always to be measured by 
count or bulk, but that certainty of attainment is also a prime 
factor. But unfortunately it is not alone the uncertainty of 
attainment which puts future and distant good at a discount. A 
far more disturbing element is our impatience to enjoy — our 
impatience to consume. We not only want to count the chick- 
ens before they are hatched, but we want a good mess of chicken 
for dinner this very day, and consequently we kill and cook the 
hen before the eggs are even laid. We may know to a reasona- 
ble certainty that if we spare the hen the eggs will be produced, 
and that in the course of a few months we may enjoy ten 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 115 

chicken dinners in lieu of this one ; and still we are unwilling to 
deny ourselves now for the sake of so much more hereafter, and 
so we wring the hen's neck or cut off her head, and she passes 
through the kitchen and mounts the dinner table in a dish. And 
we are happy for the space of about thirty minutes. We man- 
age, however, to eat more hen by going in debt. We anticipate 
that next fall we shall have money from the sale of our cotton, 
and upon that expectation we purchase divers hens on a credit, 
not to eat next fall after they are paid for, but to eat along in 
the summer before they are paid for. We thus eat out the fall 
in the summer; we eat next week this week; we eat to-morrow 
to-day, and we ate to-day yesterday. Instead of marching with 
our supply wagons in the rear and eating from behind us, we 
march with them in front and eat ahead. Having the mouth 
in the face and not in the back of the cranium, we think we must 
draw support from the future and not from the past. We pro- 
ceed as if we had literally to gnaw our way with our teeth to 
where we are going. Impatient to consume, we cannot wait to 
produce and consume afterwards, but we anticipate production, 
strain our credit, and finally pay double the regular cash price, 
or some exorbitant rate of interest, or break and never pay at 
all. And our only consolation is that we have had the hens, 
eaten every one of them, and lived high during the summer. 

Why are not orchards as numerous as gardens? Lettuce 
and mustard, cabbages, potatoes, parsnips, onions, cucumbers 
and such like vegetables are quick to mature, and may be gath- 
ered and eaten in the same year in which they are sown or 
planted, while trees are of slow growth, and if we plant apples, 
peaches, figs and pears, we must wait years for the fruit. This 
waiting is a tedious business. If we are to be blessed at all 
we want the blessing now. And what is now? Perhaps few of 
us realize how very brief the present is. We speak of a second 
as if a whole second existed at once. But there never has been 
such a thing as a second of time, and never will be. Time comes 
to us in portions so minute that if all of it that really exists were 
separated from what has perished and from what 'has not yet 
been created, the interval would not be the ten millionth part 



116 A MEMORIAL OF 

of a second. We construct mentally seconds, minutes, hours, 
days, weeks, months and years, but actual time is but a moment, 
and each moment is created precisely when it appears, and dies 
forever immediately after it is created. The past is all extinct 
existence; and the future is potential existence — that is, a name 
for what is to exist hereafter. 

There is no to-day, no yesterday, no to-morrow. There is 
nothing but this present moment. But just such a moment, and 
another, and another, so long as it may please God for time to 
continue, will follow, and these moments, before they come, and 
as they come, and after they are gone, will be added together 
mentally into the various ideal divisions of time which I have 
mentioned. But no mental operation which we can perform in 
respect to time can or does affect its nature in the least. We do 
not keep the past from perishing by dividing it up into years, 
etc., nor do we by making like divisions as to the future, impart 
to it any reality in advance of its becoming the present. Next 
year's almanac is not an account of what is, but a prediction of 
what will be. I desire to impress you with the brevity of actual 
time so that you may see clearly that whosoever sacrifices the 
future to the present sacrifices the greater to the less. As long 
as we have two moments left, we have twice as much in the 
future as in the present, and one hour yet to come is worth many 
thousands or millions as much as the moment that now is. In- 
stead, therefore, of being in haste to consume, we should con- 
sume sparingly and produce abundantly. The ability to produce 
may cease long before life terminates, and what an ugly thing 
it would be to be cut off in debt to the world and leave behind 
nothing, or less than enough, to square accounts. 

True wisdom takes cognizance of time as a ceaseless repe- 
tition of moments, and values two moments at double the price 
of one. It prizes a year as having twelve times the importance 
of a month; a month as thirty times that of a day, .and so on. 
Moreover, it distinguishes, on the same principle, between time 
and eternity, and between a life which is to end and one which 
is to endure forever. What the preachers tell us of the folly — 
nay, the madness of bartering the life to come for forbidden 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 



117 



enjoyments and indulgences in this life is doubtless very true, 
and if true is very terrible. 

Many persons are in perplexity on the subject of miracles, 
and find it difficult to credit that water has been turned into wine, 
or death transformed into life. But if time is anything at all, it 
furnishes an example of a miracle constantly performed and 
constantly repeated; for to create a real something out of noth- 
ing and conceal the process is a miracle of the highest order. 
In the production of time, the creative machinery, so to speak, 
is always at work. Space is finished and is suggestive of Divin- 
ity at rest ; time, on the contrary, is incomplete and seems to ema- 
nate from a divine activity that never intermits. Of course, 
time has no dependence whatever on the bodies that are in 
space or on their movements or revolutions ; day and night alter- 
nate, the seasons change, but time changes not; each moment is 
like every other moment, just as each part of space is like every 
other part; and the whole of space is in one and the same point 
of time, and one and the same point of time is in every point of 
space. The infinitely large, which is space, is thus brought 
within the infinitely brief, which is time, or the infinitely brief is 
diffused so as to be co-extensive with the infinitely large. The 
same moment of time is everywhere at once, and thus time is a 
literal emblem of Divinity in the great attribute of omnipres- 
ence. While we are in actual contact with these two infinites, 
time and space, and while in them we live and move and have 
our being, why should we feel that God is afar off? No matter 
how much we desire privacy, we cannot withdraw beyond the 
presence of the infinite. When you enter your chamber and 
shut the door and lock it, and blow out the light and make all 
dark, time and space are there just the same as they are here at 
this instant; and wherever they are God can be and probably 
is. And what company is God! Think of having him for your 
companion, your perpetual associate and attendant, and wonder 
that you can ever be regardless of his presence. If he sees you 
commit an act of shame, what will it avail that you are hidden 
from all mortal vision? I am not seeking to alarm your mod- 
esty, but to put your conscience on the alert, and to make you 



118 A MEMORIAL OF 

realize that there is no reason why God is not as wise touching 
your every misdeed as you are yourself, or as time and space 
would be if they were living intelligences. In fact, there is no 
certainty that space is not spiritual and a part of the all-compre- 
hensive and everlasting God, or that we are not literally in the 
hollow of God's hand. 

In what I have said of our eagerness to consume, and to 
snatch from the future much of that which appropriately belongs 
to it, I have not meant to disparage any just claim of the present 
to reasonable and moderate indulgence, nor to commend the 
practice of hoarding for the mere sake of having and keeping. 
What I wish to teach is that we should at least stay even, and 
not feast on what is yet to be earned or paid for — that we 
should not mortgage the future to obtain means to support the 
present, but, on the contrary, should endeavor to bring over 
from the past more or less surplus, and thus provide, in some 
degree against the contingencies and casualties of the future. 
It would be most unwise to deny ourselves what we can afford 
and what we actually need. A man is far more important than 
all he has or all he hopes to have. Real excellence is internal, 
not external, and to exalt what we have above what we are 
would be to set the inferior over the superior. The great busi- 
ness of life is not to have, but to be. The rearing, training and 
development of human beings, including ourselves, is beyond 
all odds the highest end which we can pursue. A world full of 
first-class men and women would be the richest and most prec- 
ious world that could exist. What our children are is every- 
thing — what fortune we may be able to leave them is not 
immaterial, but is comparatively of little consequence if they 
are all right mentally, morally and physically. It is far better 
to have a worthy child than to be worth an immense estate. The 
Bible puts a high value on children, nor does it over-rate them 
if they are good; but if they are vicious and depraved, and will 
not amend, the trouble they occasion is beyond the power of words 
to express. Good children do not need any great abundance 
upon which to begin life, and bad children do not deserve it, 
except upon the condition of reforming. The best service which 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 119 

we can render to the young is to put them in a condition to help 
themselves. The most effective means of doing this yet discov- 
ered are correct moral and industrial training, together with a 
liberal education. No human being can be brought to his best 
state without educating him. As a violin must be put in tune 
and kept in tune in order for it to give out a fine strain of music 
so a man or woman must have the mental faculties developed 
and harmonized by education, or the conduct of life will, for the 
most part, be a weak and discordant performance, compared 
with what it might be. To deny that education is beneficial is no 
less extravagant than to require a musician to play without first 
tuning his instrument. Indeed, with the human instrument the 
being and keeping in tune is the main concern, for as the chief 
concert for which it is supposed to be designed is beyond this 
life, the capacity to make good music there is of far greater 
importance than all the music it makes or can make here. 

Education promotes mental growth, and full stature cannot 
be attained without it. To be large-minded ought to be desira- 
ble to all. The size of the body is not very material, but who 
that can help it ought to be content with a little mind? Some 
have not the opportunity of acquiring an education, and of 
course they must forego its advantages and do the best they can 
without it; but it is utter folly to restrict education by voluntary 
choice, either in degree or in the number who are to share in 
its benefits. If every man and woman were educated to the 
utmost, there would still be enough inequality and enough 
unlikeness. There is no danger that the world will become idle 
and useless as soon as the masses become learned. With the 
spread of knowledge, methods of labor will multiply and improve, 
so that the ratio of production to labor will increase to such a 
degree that the mere necessaries of life will be easily supplied, 
and our great business will not be to get money, but to get 
more knowledge. Most probably the reason why money is so 
generally an object of pursuit now is simply to afford us occu- 
pation until we can become enough enlightened to work with 
equal ardor after knowledge. The latter is a far higher and 
nobler prize to toil for, and is destined to take its true place at 



120 A MEMORIAL OF 

the stock exchange and in quotations of the market. One scholar 
will hoe another's cabbage, not for so many dollars per day, but 
for so many ideas which have never occurred before to any man, 
learned or unlearned, except the owner of the aforesaid cab- 
bages. It may be, too, that the modes of supporting animal life 
will be discovered which will put a stop to the consumption of 
cabbages, and render it quite needless to produce them except for 
purposes of ornament or to facilitate the study of botany. If 
the work that is now done to earn money, or money's worth, 
could be devoted to the acquisition of knowledge and the spread 
of enlightenment, the increase of wisdom would be so vast in a 
few generations that to meet with an ignorant adult would be 
more rare than it now is to find a well informed child. It is to 
knowledge that we must look for devising means to promote its 
own increase. The more that is known the more will be known, 
and the more rapidly will fresh knowledge be acquired. If the 
whole world would search for truth, immense stores of it would 
be discovered and our wealth of knowledge would become great. 
And still there would be no danger of ever exhausting the mate- 
rial. Truth is so abundant that Omniscience only can ever be 
master of it all. 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON JUDICIAL 

ADMINISTRATION AND REMEDIAL 

PROCEDURE. 

Submitted at the First Annual Meeting of the Georgia Bar Association 

by Judge L. E. Bleckley, Chairman of the Committee, 

August 13, 1884. 



Reprinted from Annual Report. 






REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON JUDICIAL 

ADMINISTRATION AND REMEDIAL 

PROCEDURE. 

In the administration of justice there ought to be correctness, 
celerity and cheapness. The second, alone, is the topic of this 
report. 

Time is the increasing factor — the growing element of mod- 
ern life. Progress is the realization, in short time, of what 
formerly occupied long time. At least, this is one form of 
progress, and that form with which we of the nineteenth century 
are in immediate contact — a century that, if measured by results 
in some of the spheres of human activity, might well count for a 
thousand years. How is it with practical remedial jurisprudence? 
Is it up with, or is it behind, the age? Compare it with other 
business, public or private; with operations of the War Depart- 
ment, the Navy, the Treasury, the Post-office, the Interior; with 
commerce, manufactures, banking, transportation, mining, farm- 
ing; with the venerable and conservative vocations of teaching 
and preaching; with anything, and what is its relative position? 
The main bulk of world-work is ahead of it ; several branches of 
that work, for instance, the postal service, general transportation, 
commerce and manufactures, are so far in advance that the law 
seems to crawl whilst they go on wings. 

Is this relative backwardness a necessary condition, rooted 
in the nature of things, or is it attributable to deficient energy 
and enterprise on the part of the legal profession? Can it be 
possible the law is to become obsolete ; that the ages are to 
outgrow it; and that, though sufficing for the past, it is not 
equal to the demands of the future? Will it be Bradstreeted as 
a failure? Surely this supposition cannot be entertained. And 
if not, the conclusion is imminent that, either directly or indi- 
rectly, we lawyers are responsible for the wide chasm that sepa- 
rates the effective administration of the law from those 



124 A MEMORIAL OF 

industries, public and private, with which it ought to be abreast. 
Is it fit that a body of men so numerous, so cultivated, so capa- 
ble, should suffer their quota of labor, their distinctive calling, 
to remain hopelessly behind? Let a noble, manly pride answer 
in the negative. 

No single measure, perhaps no dozen measures, would be 
adequate to the full accomplishment of the needed reform. But 
there is a step that may confidently be recommended as the initia- 
tive, and that is, to draw sharply the line between the two 
branches of administration, the judicial and the ministerial, and 
to confine entirely to the latter the great bulk of formal or 
unlitigated business. The subjects of administration are crime, 
tort, title and contract. In the last of these groups is always 
embraced the current business which commerce and all the other 
active pursuits pour into the Courts. This group represents, in the 
main, the legal business which general business produces. Most 
of it is plain collecting — uncontested, unlitigated. Were it all 
of that class, its appearance in Court would be an empty cere- 
mony, but because some of it is litigated and some not, both 
classes appear at the bar together, that they may be distinguished 
and severally identified, and that trial may be had where there 
is controversy, and formal judgment rendered where there is 
none. Now, the precise suggestion we would make is, that the 
formal judgment is useless, and that for purposes of distinction 
and identification this circuitous and dilatory method is wholly 
unnecessary. At present we shall limit the suggestion to a par- 
ticular, though very extensive, order of contracts, namely, 
unconditional written contracts for the payment of money. There 
is no propriety in any of these entering Court at all, in the first 
instance. Of the two administrative stages, adjudication and 
collection, the former, in dealing with these cases, should be 
omitted ; for the latter alone is appropriate, and it alone is amply 
sufficient. All that good methods of business, good logic, good 
morals or good manners, require is that the original writing 
shall be registered, filed and remain in the Clerk's office, and 
that an execution founded upon it be issued by the Clerk and 
enforced by the Sheriff. What would warrant a judgment on 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 125 

mere inspection is intrinsically as worthy of confidence without 
a judgment as with it. Relatively to the execution, it, at last, 
is the real producer, and the judgment a superfluous middle- 
man. In the light of experience, absolute, definite written con- 
vention between debtor and creditor imports no less verity than 
do the adjudications of Courts of justice. Of ordinary bills and 
notes outstanding, as large a proportion as of judgments repre- 
sent just debts. The law itself, in the special matter of negotia- 
bility and transfer, treats the former, before maturity, as 
superior, and after maturity, as equal to the latter. What, indeed, 
is of higher credit than a man's solemn written admission against 
his own interest — against himself? Every man his own judge, 
is far better for his interest than "every man his own lawyer." 
After he has adjudicated his case for himself, audited the amount 
and fixed the time of payment, what need is there for further 
adjudication? Nothing material is left open except breach of 
performance; and that question the law settles prima facie in 
consonance with the possession of the paper, which possession 
ought to count for as much with the clerk as before the judge. 

Of course, any meritorious defense whatsoever, whether of 
law or of fact, should be available when presented by way of 
affidavit of illegality to the execution. Let such an affidavit be 
the direct means of distinguishing litigated matter from the 
unlitigated, and let the issues presented by it be tried and deter- 
mined as is now practiced in cases of ordinary affidavits of 
illegality. Certain restrictions and qualifications may be proper 
in case of the debtor's death, or of other providential contingency, 
the details of which can be definitely settled by statute. Only 
the general principle of the system is here indicated. 

It will be observed that of the four subjects of administra- 
tion only one is directly affected by the carefully limited measure 
now proposed. No doubt the others will be affected incidentally, 
but only for good. The immediate aim is to bring up legal 
business to the prompt support of general business. The time 
relation between them is out of proportion, and calls for funda- 
mental readjustment. A statute conceived wholly in the modern 
spirit, and fully up with the progress of the age, will alone 



126 A MEMORIAL OF 

suffice for the purpose contemplated. Although lawyers, as 
such, do not legislate, they prompt and inspire legislation. They 
can promote or obstruct law reform at pleasure. It is chiefly 
because of this indirect power over legislation that they are 
responsible to the public for the general state of the law. There 
is no good statute that they cannot have passed ; no bad one 
that they cannot have defeated or repealed. 

So vital a change as this report advocates cannot escape 
opposition, but will encounter it, doubtless, both within the pro- 
fession and beyond its pale. ''Changes in procedure," says 
Professor Amos, "are the most difficult of all changes in the law 
to bring about." The profession numbers and will always number 
among its members some typical lawyers, envoys from the past 
to the present, messengers and expounders of precedent. Inno- 
vation, especially abrupt innovation, they regard as western 
adventure, or as rash speculation in legal futures. Venerating 
experience, they distrust experiment, preferring the growth of 
law to legislative manufacture. In their school of art the novel 
is the grotesque ; nothing is absolutely pure save the works of 
the old masters, and the approximately pure are works executed 
in their style, and those only. Their intense conservatism, though 
in some respects virtuously pernicious, breathes a beneficent 
utility, and aims at exalted public ends. To ascribe to them 
selfish or interested motives would be to commit an ungenerous 
mistake. Not the flesh-pots of Egypt, but the perils of the wil- 
derness, retard their advance to the promised land — perils to 
the commonwealth of Israel, not merely to the individual or the 
tribe. 

Few, perhaps, are so frozenly conservative as the present 
Master of the Rolls, who is credited with saying recently that 
law could not be quick or cheap, or brought to every man's door, 
and that if it could, it would be the greatest misfortune that 
could happen to the country: 30 Albany Law Journal, page 2. 
The Queen's justice, according to this reputed deliverance, must 
and ought to be slow and dear and distant. Such protection to 
the subject in return for his allegiance looks cold and ungra- 
cious. A widely different standard of administration is that 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 127 

desiderated in the pages of this report. Correctness, celerity, 
cheapness — ■ cheapness to the suitor, not to the public. If it 
required all the resources of society to place the faithful subject 
or citizen in possession of his rights and to secure him in their 
enjoyment, to that object should they be devoted. Sovereign 
power has no higher or holier function than the redress of griev- 
ances — the distribution of justice; and time is of the essence 
thereof. Were it practicable, every man should have his rights 
as promptly as his letters or his morning paper. 
Respectfully submitted, 

L. E. Bleckley, 
Henry B. Tompkins, 
Alex. C. King, 
W. H. Dabney, 

Committee. 

Judge Bleckley: It is signed by all the members but one, 
and his assent we did not have an opportunity of obtaining. I 
also have a supplemental report which I will read. I will state, 
for the accuracy of the facts of this report my brother, the Sec- 
retary, (Walter B. Hill) is responsible, though I indorse them. I 
have not had an opportunity of investigating them. 

Judge Bleckley then read the Supplemental Report as 
follows : 

SUPPLEMENTAL REPORT. 

We favor the adoption in this State of a system of pro- 
cedure known as the Code of Procedure, by which causes of 
action, whether legal or equitable, are presented to the Court by 
petition, "plainly, fully and distinctly," and by which defenses 
thereto, whether legal or equitable, may be similarly interposed. 
This procedure, adopted in New York in 1843, is now in force 
in a majority of the States of the Union, was adopted in Eng- 
land in 1873, and is the system upon which the best legal and 
judicial talent is employed in building up a rational method of 
procedure in civil cases. 

2. The distinction between law and equity jurisdiction, while 
susceptible of historical explanation, has now no foundation in 



128 A MEMORIAL OF 

principle. Suitors are entitled to their rights, as such, when they 
resort to the Courts, irrespective of the question whether such 
rights were recognized in England as legal or equitable. This is 
especially true under a system like ours, in which precisely the 
same tribunal administers both systems. 

3. Those States which provide for suitors separate Courts 
of law and chancery, and maintain strictly the lines of demarka- 
tion between the systems of law and equity (as New Jersey and 
Alabama) are consistent in their legislation. So, also, are those 
which have completely obliterated the distinction and have 
adopted the Code of Procedure. But the legislation of Georgia, 
in which the Courts are consolidated but the jurisdiction sepa- 
rated, in which law and equity are half-way merged, is anoma- 
lous and inconsistent. It puts our judicial system out of 
harmony with every other and deprives us of the advantage of 
that assistance which we might obtain in the development of our 
jurisprudence from the working of harmonious systems in other 
States. 

4. The fact that two of the Constitutions of Georgia have 
contained a provision authorizing the General Assembly to merge 
the law and equity jurisdictions may be taken as strong evidence 
that the people, speaking in their most solemn form of utter- 
ance, have desired to bring about this change in our judicial 
system. 

Resolved, That we, therefore, recommend that the Presi- 
dent appoint a committee whose duty it shall be to prepare and 
present to the next General Assembly, with this recommenda- 
tion, a Code of Procedure, based upon the following principles: 

(a) The Superior Court of this State, on the trial of all 
civil cases, shall give effect to all rights, whether they prevail at 
law or equity. 

(b) In all cases where there is a conflict or variance between 
the principles of law and equity touching the same subject 
matter, the principles of equity shall prevail. 

Respectfully submitted, L. E. Bleckley, 

Henry B. Tompkins, 

Alex. C. King, 

W. H. Dabney, Committee. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 129 



REMARKS OF JUDGE BLECKLEY ON THE 
PRECEDING REPORT. 

(From the stenographic report of the proceedings.) 

Mr. Bleckley: Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Bar 
Association, nothing more distinct, nothing more definite, has 
been proposed to this Association than is embodied in the report 
which I had on yesterday the honor to submit. It contemplates 
dealing now with one branch of legal business, which is what 
may be termed the collecting business of the country. The mode 
which it recommends is to provide by statute for the registry 
and filing of promissory notes and bills and other written evi- 
dences of contract, unconditional, for a specific amount, to take 
the instrument itself and give it credit, to consider it not dis- 
credited so long as the creditor has it in possession and has 
control. 

It is for the law itself, through its ministerial officers, to 
administer itself without a judicial form. The analogy that is 
presented to my mind in adopting that scheme is nature itself. 
There is no judicial department in the laws of nature. There 
we have the legislative and executive with the judicial omitted. 
The laws of nature execute themselves. They are automatic, 
applying themselves to the cases for which they were designed, 
and are executed, so far as we can know or see, without any 
intermediate interference by any power in the given case. Now, 
it is practicable and altogether feasible for human law to be 
applied in the same manner, that is, for the law, which is really 
sovereign, to speak and give it direction in a general way with- 
out any special expression through a judicial organ, on a given 
case. That is the scheme that is submitted to this Association 
for its adoption or disapproval. It is to treat what the debtor 
does, what he originates, as unrepealed and unmodified so long 
as it is outstanding, as it would be treated by a Judge, if a 
Judge dealt with it. The inference would be made that the debt 
was still owed. It is a cheap and expeditious practice, a proper 



130 A MEMORIAL OF 

and just practice, because the creditor is as much entitled to his 
money the very moment the contract is due as afterwards, and 
it is a species of injustice to make him wait. If you want a 
cheap law, a prompt law, a trustworthy law, you can get it by 
simply administering to the debtor his own contract; and that 
is the principle of this report. 

Now, I beg you to meditate on it; reflect on it; come to it 
with your own good common sense. There is no reason, if I 
owed Jenkins on a promissory note that he should not go to 
the Clerk's office the day after it was due and get out an execu- 
tion and make me pay it. Let the law be its own administrator 
like the law of nature. If the law of nature deals with you six 
months from now, it don't send you to a Judge, but it takes 
hold of you and shakes you up, and that is the way our human 
law ought to do in these plain hiatters where there is no con- 
troversy. Where there is a controversy, let the question be 
made up and go before a Judge for adjudication. 

Now, my brethren, members of the Bar of Georgia, there 
are truths that you may fail to look at. There are those who 
look through professional spectacles that I have put off. I 
do not care how you restrict this remedy, but I say the principle 
of it is right, and I ask you to recognize the principle and apply 
it cautiously, at first. 

Mr. Vason : Does it not follow the common law remedy of 
recapture ? 

Mr. Bleckley: No sir. It does not go as far as the law 
of distress entitles a man to go. He does not send his bailiff, 
but the law appoints a minister, and he has to appeal to him. It 
is not a case of a man redressing his own injuries, but using 
the ministerial officers of the law. You might just as well have 
a writ issued for everybody to show cause concerning a deed 
why it should not be recorded. A man knows when he owes a 
debt. He settles that just as effectually as the execution of a 
deed is when he executes it. Vote against it if you want to, 
but let us dispose of it, because I am going to stand on it. I 
am going to lay down on it. (Laughter.) I am going to camp 
on it, (great laughter), because I am thoroughly convinced, as 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 331 

you see by my manner. (Laughter.) It is right; and none of 
you can say it is wrong, except you speak in the line of old 
precedents. I confess it is a new departure, and I want it to 
be. That is what we need. If we go along in the old 
way we will never catch up in the world. We will never 
catch up in the world if we go marching about here in this man- 
ner and call upon everybody to help us. I tell you it is a mis- 
conception, it is a mistake altogether. We are ready for the 
question if we only knew it, and the right way to do it is to 
appoint a committee, it seems to me. I abstained from making 
any direct recommendation in the report as to how it should be 
done. My scheme is as definite, Mr. Chairman, as yours was 
about salaries, or as that about legal education. It has got as 
much point in it, as easily apprehended, and it is as definite and 
distinct as either of those! Why not appoint some one to go 
out and enquire what he thinks of the salary question or the 
educational question? (Laughter.) Now, I beg you to con- 
sider how simple this thing is, and how safe it is if you will 
confine it to future transactions. 

I have occupied your time perhaps too long. I have gone 
over my ten minutes, which I believe is the limit. But instead 
of passing that resolution that you have reconsidered, if it was 
not for the modesty of making a motion for the adoption of my 
own report, I would do so. If I have got any friend here, I 
would be glad if he would move it. (Laughter and applause.) 



THE POET BLECKLEY. 

BY JUDGE JOHN W. AKIN. 

A Paper Read Before the Georgia Bar Association 
at Its Twelfth Annual Meeting, October 3, 1895. 



Reprinted from Annual Report. 



THE POET BLECKLEY. 

A son of the mountains; catching in early youth an inspira- 
tion from their blue heights which probably only those feel who 
live within their shadow — an inspiration of the ideal and the 
beautiful which makes one think the unspeakable and turn to 
poetry in the hopeless effort to tell what he feels ; marrying the 
law and devoting himself to this chosen spouse through a long 
and active life, until, when the shadows are lengthening fast, he 
voluntarily divorces himself from this mistress of his youth, in 
order, as he fondly hopes, to chase the more swiftly and catch 
the more quickly a Phantom which, like a mirage in the desert, 
has danced before the deluded vision of the wise for ages past, 
only to slip from their empty grasp — the Phantom of Financial 
Truth; delighting by his comradeship the practitioners who met 
him in the forum; ennobling the ermine of the highest judicial 
chair in this proud commonwealth of noblemen, until, tired with 
the ceaseless drudgery of an over-worked bench, he voluntarily 
retires to his mountain home, followed by the love of all who 
came within the domain of his influence; — this is the man on 
the poetic side of whose image we shall look for a moment 
to-day — the poet Bleckley. 



A few of the older members of the bar remember General 
Henry L. Benning, once a Supreme Court Judge, who, spared 
in battle, died ten years after the war. Among the earliest 
poems of Judge Bleckley was a tribute to Benning, whose con- 
cluding lines are interesting because this was probably the first 
published essay of his muse: 

In peace it was his lot to die; 
In peace, O, may his ashes lie! 
And sweetest peace, while ages roll, 
Attend his noble, manly soul! 



136 A MEMORIAL OF 

One dear to him married and moved away to Montana. On 
this he writes a poem whose opening stanza contains a pretty 
conceit. The whole is worth repeating. It is entitled 

GEORGIA— MONTANA. 

The cheeriest, brightest summer day- 
Alas, to us is lost! 

By love too rudely torn away 
And carried to the frost. 

Oh, was it not a cruel crime 

To snatch a piece of summer time 

And set it in a winter clime? 

No wonder if we sore complain 

In tones and tears of woe; 
Transplanted is our sugarcane 

From sunshine into snow; 
Transplanted from the balmy breeze, 
To blizzards cold enough to freeze 
The sweetness in the maple trees. 

A summer pearl of precious price 

Before the swine of winter cast, 
An orange blossom in the ice, 

A tropic Odor on the blast, 
(Bereft, alas, of solar beams) ; 
'Tis thus our absent sister seems 
To us in all our thoughts and dreams. 

I have no proof that Judge Bleckley is one of the many 
authors of "The Beautiful Snow ;" nor have I discovered among 
his productions a poem on "Spring." But I have found one 
which was evidently written when the Judge was in the country, 
and which reminds us of the mental attitude of Virgil in some 
of his Eclogues, not the best things that Virgil wrote. It is 
entitled "The Farmer," and in reading it one can almost hear 
the drowsy hum of bees at dinner-time, when the air is still and 
warm, and the sunshine beats down in a steady rain of gold upon 
the tulips and the roses. If the author of "The Frost is on the 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 137 

Pumpkin" had published "The Farmer" under the name of 
James Whitcomb Riley, the two productions would probably 
have ranked together. I quote one stanza: 

A subtle beauty, sweet and fair, 

Which nothing can subdue or shatter, 

Forever floats on earth and air 

And clings to every shape of matter. 

Happy the man whose vision, turned away from the sordid 
and clarified by sweetness of heart, can see this "subtle beauty" 
of which the poet speaks! For him the beautiful blooms in 
every flower and shines in every star. 



Religion and poetry! How naturally are they related! Is 
each a part of the other? Or are they distinct and separate, yet 
connected by some subtle kinship? Does poetry tend to make 
us religious? Does religion make us poetical? Who of the great 
prophets of Israel did not feel the divine afflatus? Read the 
rhapsody of Isaiah, whose hope of the Christ to be is set forth 
in the rugged poetry of his inspired prophecies; contemplate 
the poetic mysticism of Ezekiel; listen at the plaintive lamenta- 
tions of Jeremiah; see the vivid picture of the last judgment 
portrayed in the burning poetry of the lesser prophet, Malachi ; 
behold rugged Patmos in the lonely sea, and hear the apocalypse 
of the poet-preacher John, as he tells of the golden candle-sticks 
and the one hundred and forty and four thousand, the walls of 
Jasper and the sea of glass, the dragon and the scarlet woman, 
the cry of the souls under the altar, the voice of many waters, 
the shining river and the new Jerusalem; and tell me, can 
Poetry and Religion — not the narrow limitations of sect and 
creed, but Religion — the recementing of the human soul to the 
heart of God — can these be divorced? 

Tom Moore, sensuous and voluptuous as was much of his 
poetry, never more sweetly struck his lyre than when he sung 
"Come ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish;" and Tennyson, 
majestic harpist, soared to the loftiest heights of poetry when, 



138 A MEMORIAL OF 

in the immortal requiem to his departed friend, the In Memo- 
riam, he sounded the depths of faith and gave to all who read 
it a firmer trust and a loftier hope in the everlasting goodness 
of God. 

In one of these stanzas Tennyson said: 

"Behold, we know not anything; 

I can but trust that good shall fall, 
At last, far off, at last to all, 
And every winter change to spring." 

In another line he said: 

"We have but faith, we cannot know; 
For knowledge is of things we see. 
And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness : let it grow." 

These sentiments are echoed by Judge Bleckley, probably 
unconsciously, ( for why should not the great and the good, though 
separated by oceans, grope after the truth in the same paths of 
thought?) in the following poem, one stanza of which I quote, on 

FAITH. 

Cast out into space 

For life and for death; 

No ultimate base, 

No bottom beneath, 

No limit or bound 

Above or around, 

No wall at the side 

Or roof overhead, 

No cover to hide 

Me, living or dead, 

No refuge for thought or for sense : 

Yet I will not despair 

As I drift through the air, 

Afloat in the boundless immense; 

In the depths of the night 

Cometh faith without light, 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 139 

Cometh faith without sight, 

And I trust the great Sovereign unknown; 

No finite or definite throne, 

But the infinite, nameless, unthinkable ONE. 

Infinity, immensity, profundity, the unspeakable in space and 
time, are all here suggested in words that make thought tire 
like some wild bird flying over a trackless sea, with no land in 
sight, looking in vain for some rock whereon to rest her weary 
wing. 



Of a kindred nature is his poem on Immortality. He wrote 
a poem memorial of the wife of Hon. James D. Waddell, now 
some years deceased. This he divided into three parts : "Immor- 
tality," "Omnipresence" and "Medora" — the latter being Mrs. 
Waddell's given name. We may well pause to hear the two 
stanzas on 

IMMORTALITY. 

Oh, she is now so still and strange ! 
Though this is death, perhaps the change, 

The change we so lament and weep, 

Is not, on inner life, so deep 
As sleep and waking out of sleep. 
How oft did she in slumber lie? 
Her body breathed — could smile or sigh, 
The soul appeared to faint and die. 

This charnel death seems sent to clasp 

The body in its icy grasp. 

Who knows but sleep is more at strife 

With spirit breath, the life of life, 

Than death itself? Yet sleep is rest 

Upon a gentle mother's breast, 

And waking seems a pledge — a test, 

Each day, of resurrecting might, 

A voucher blazoned on the light, 

"There shall be no eternal night." 
If God can common slumber break, 
What hinders that the dead may wake? 



140 A MEMORIAL OF 

The likeness between sleep and death, a theme as old as the 
myths of ancient times, is here portrayed in a light somewhat 
new and by no means unpicturesque. The waking from sleep 
is contrasted with the waking from death; and the power to 
compel the latter is inferred from the existence of the former. 
If some unseen power can reanimate the body and reillumine 
the eye lately passive in temporary insensibility, why may not 
that same power call back into human dust the inexplicable force 
which once made it think and breathe and feel? 



Our poet was in the same frame of mind — religious medita- 
tion — when he wrote a poem on "Fear," whose religious phil- 
osophy, no less than its depth of introspective reasoning on a 
subject which cannot be reasoned out, makes it rank among the 
best on such themes. I commend its every thought and line to 
your meditative consideration. A smaller mind would have been 
ashamed or afraid to say with him : 

That I the naked truth confess, 
Which is, I know I do not know. 

Some will agree with him that "the hell of everlasting sleep" 
is worse than a "hell of pain." Cowper, in that period of deep 
melancholy which engloomed a portion of his life, would doubt- 
less have sympathized with Judge Bleckley when he said in this 
poem: 

And thus the chance of bliss for me, 

If lots were cast, is one in three. 

Cowper emerged from the shadow and sang that majestic 
hymn: 

God moves in a mysterious way 

His wonders to perform, 
He plants His footsteps on the sea 
And rides upon the storm. 

But Judge Bleckley sees no light in the darkness, and, turn- 
ing his eyes to the primeval Edenic fear, he concludes this paean 
of hopelessness by declaring: 

Like Adam, I have disobeyed, 
And I, like Adam, am afraid. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 141 

Judge Bkckley has written some poetry which is not in verse. 
Let us turn to some lines suggested by the death of the late 
Senator Colquitt: 

When we gaze at death through our emotions and relate it in our 
thoughts to survivors and their bereavement, it suggests inexorable 
calamity, irreparable loss, and is always sombre and sorrowful. But 
seen by the intellect, in the calm light and clear atmosphere of reason, 
and related in our thoughts to the departed, it often suggests gain and 
glory and it seems grand and beautiful. Thus may we look at it on the 
present occasion. For a few moments let our hearts be still, our eyes 
be dry; let our regrets be moderated and our sympathies restrained. 
Behold death as a beneficence — a benediction ! There is no felicity 
greater, no fortune better, than to be old enough and good enough to die. 
This is the true end for all to aim at; for all to pursue from the begin- 
ning to the close of life. To be good, and to become old in goodness, is 
the interest, as well as the duty, of every one to whom the privilege of 
so doing is accorded. He who succeeds in this has true success, and 
needs no other, for in this, everything worthy of permanent estimation 
is comprehended. Whether his sphere of duty be high or low, wide or 
narrow, easy or difficult, he who fits himself to his place, fills it, meets 
its responsibilities and discharges its obligations, persevering faithfully 
through the spring and summer and autumn of life, failing not till winter 
comes, is ready to die. And his death, viewed in the radiance that 
streams upon it from his finished life, is beautiful. 

Your own minds will make the right application of these remarks to 
the statesman, the soldier, the patriot, the citizen, the neighbor, the 
friend, the great Georgian, whose ashes are now here to honor by their 
solemn presence for a few brief hours the capitol of his native State. 
With the waning of one more moon, his years would have numbered 
three score and ten ; nor was he less mature in goodness than he was in 
age. He, if any man, was qualified to die, and was eligible to that invisi- 
ble convocation, the celestial senate, which no candidate can reach save 
by passing, through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 



Judge Bleckley's poem next noticed would probably touch 
more hearts than anything he has written. It appeals to the 
poor and the wretched. The vast majority of men are always in 
the first state — poverty. All occasionally experience the sec- 
ond — wretchedness ; for never beat a heart not sometimes 
bowed down. To all such, the sentiment — the sweet and inex- 



142 A MEMORIAL OF 

pressibly tender and touching sentiment — in this little poem of 
triplet stanza is refreshing. He calls it 

PRAYER. 

The poor can most devoutly pray; 
Who want for bread can truly say, 
"O, give us daily bread this day!" 

In vain the rich, with full supply, 
To pray like wretched want may try: 
If want were not, all prayer would die. 

Where every bliss beside is rare, 

And hearts are threatened with despair, 

Is felt the sweetest bliss of prayer. 

Thank God that those in sorest need 
Are best prepared to pray and plead: 
That they can pray, indeed, indeed. 



To turn from grave to gay : Judge Bleckley stood on Broad- 
way and looked at the ever-flowing human currents. In verse 
he asked whence they came and why they hurried ceaselessly. 
And this was his answer : 

To judge your purpose by your speed, 
It must be something great, indeed; 
'Tis surely not a rash surmise 
That life eternal is your prize : 
No meaner aim, methinks, could you 
With ardor such as this pursue. 
And yet, alas, if truth were told, 
The most of you are after gold. 



Judge Bleckley's longest poem is on Catoosa, written in 1875. 
The verse flows easily and the rhythm is good. It contains 
nothing of the didactic, nor any special beauty of thought. It 
is rather descriptive of Catoosa Springs. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 143 

A sweet little poem, well worth preserving, is: 

OCTOBER. 

The time is very nigh 

When summer leaves must die; 

Perchance, too, you or I. 

The Autumn's verge is crossed, 
And soon by wind and frost 
Will leaf and life be lost. 

What life shall stay or go, 
No wisdom here below 
Is wise enough to know. 

While you and I survive, 
While both are yet alive, 
Let Love, un waning, thrive. 

Oh, be it never told 

That, like the year grown old, 

Our later love gets cold. 

This little poem, of peculiar meter but perfect rhythm, reminds 
us of "the melancholy days," as Cowper was wont to call them; 
when the leaves are falling and the golden rod blazing and the 
chestnut burrs opening. It produces on me a sensation beyond 
expression. In some inexplicable way, it suggests the everlast- 
ing antitheses of life and death, time and eternity. 



Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" is famous the world over; pos- 
sibly immortal. And yet I make bold to say that "Locksley 
Hall," while of greater length and more pretension, is not, as a 
whole, one whit better poetry than what Judge Bleckley has writ- 
ten upon a kindred theme. It is called 

UNEQUAL MARRIAGE. 

He has thy hand, the altar vow 

Has made that his forever; 
But not thy heart, for it will bow 

To his dominion never. 



144 A MEMORIAL OF 

Thy spirit still will soar aloft — 

Still keep thee far above him; 
And though he claim thy pity oft, 

Yet never canst thou love him. 

His lot is hard, but harder thine, 

Half-wedded, gifted woman; 
For thou art only not divine, 

And he is — only human. 

On reading these lines one recalls, by contrast, those from 
"Locksley Hall": 

"As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, 
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down." 

In direct contrast is the sentiment in Bleckley's lines : 

Thy spirit still will soar aloft — 
Still keep thee far above him. 

Which of these is true? Alas, let the miserable instances 
answer, where spirit, gentility and refinement in the person of 
a born lady, have been yoked with grossness, stupidity and brut- 
ishness in the shape of man. It is the exception when, in 
such cases, the woman's spirit "still will soar aloft." 



"The Bride of Hope," "Mountain Flowers," "Cassarism," 
and "Mother" are three shorter poems, the latter founded on 
this incident: A wounded boy, carried from the battle-field, 
kept begging for his mother. That was all he could say. When 
asked to name his regiment, he could only answer "Mother." 
They never knew who he was. 



Judge Bleckley's writings — even his judicial opinions — 
show a fixed propensity to combine the poetic and the humorous. 
This is seen particularly in a little poem which is unique in 
humor, bright in conception, and happy in the semi-punning use 
of quasi-legal phrases. It reminds one of Dean Swift's defini- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 145 

tion of wit: "The discovery of the unexpected relations of 
ideas." He calls it 

LAW LOVE. 

The burning of a man's abode 
Is punished by the Penal Code, 

With loss of life or lands ; 
Then, surely, that offense, more dire, 
Of setting all his heart on fire, 

Fit penalty demands. 

Dear, guilty girl — though guilty, dear — 
The plaintiff cites you to appear 

In presence of the parson; 
(He grants that you may fix the day), 
To answer in the usual way, 

This last aforesaid arson. 

Do not your tender guilt deny, 
But own it, darling, with a sigh ; 

I long for judgment by confession: 
Do not affect the law's delay, 
And force me still to plead and pray; 

Concede my right, and yield possession. 



Those who have read the poem which I next quote* have 
doubtless wondered whether its inspiration was really a phantom 
or flesh and blood. All know the tendency of a lover's heart to 
idealize the one adored. In this poem there is to me something 
delicious. Reading it, I can almost hear the swish of unreal 
skirts, and see the drapery of spirit hair falling over ghostly 
shoulders of invisible alabaster, and feel the light of phantom 
eyes peering through mystic air. Has there not come into 
the life of each of us a dreamy vision akin to that which the 
learned judge must have seen through the muse's eyes when he 
wrote "The Phantom Lady." 



One of his longest poems is entitled "Two Cities." In the 
mere mechanism of rhetoric one is struck by its fine antithesis. 



* See page 67. 



146 A MEMORIAL OF 

On a subject which most men think upon, especially in later 
years, and which all men must experience., it will appeal to all 
classes of readers. All flesh, we know, inhabits first one then 
the other of these cities. We believe that we shall yet dwell in 
the third — the city of C. We believe; for, as our poet says, 
"faith is not knowledge." 

If this falls under the eye of one who is not interested in 
his other poems, let him turn to this and read it entire. It is 
one of his very best. Nay, few of its kind in the whole realm 
of poetry equal it. These are strong but deserved words. 
Observe its unbroken rhythm, its unconscious mysticism, its sug- 
gestion of sincere agnosticism, its deft personification — its 
urbanizing of the three realms — life, death and the world 
beyond both. At one of those times which come now and then 
into the life of each, when a shadow from the other world falls 
across our path and shrouds our hearts, who has not felt the 
infinite pathos suggested by these closing lines : 

The day is no better bestowed than the night, 
And darkness is precious as well as the light. 



It is not my purpose to speak of Judge Bleckley's orations, 
essays, judicial opinions, or the incidents of his life. We are 
now concerned with his poetical side only. 

But we find prose and poetry sometimes closely related. For 
instance, in 1886, he delivered before the literary societies of 
Mercer University an address on "Truth in Thought and Emo- 
tion," concluding with the poem on "Cucumbers," in which, 
after apotheosizing this vegetable fiend, he contradicts in the 
following counsel, the springtime warning of many an anxious 
mother to her wayward boy: 

And eat enough; with such a victual 
The danger lies in eating little. 

So, a commencement address at the University of Georgia 
on "Truth in Conduct," he concluded with a little poem on 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 147 

"Rats as a Type of Energy," the punning in whose first stanza 
reminds one of Hood's "Faithless Nellie Gray." As a bright 
curiosity it is worth quoting: 

You lie in your chamber, just under the attic, 

On a bed of nocturnal probation, 
And listen to rats — those beings erratic 

Engaged in the ratification 
Of mischief they've cunningly done on the sly, 

And met in convention to rat-ratify. 

Two of the most picturesque characters in our history are 
Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs. Each was unlike 
any other. Their individualities are clearly outlined in the per- 
spective of the most dramatic (was it not the most tragic?) 
period in the history of this republic. I cannot linger here; to 
Georgians, at least, the fame of each is an ever-freshening glory. 

In poetry, as genuine as was ever graven upon his waxen 
tablets by the friend and protege of Maecenas, Judge Bleckley 
has embalmed each. Here are his lines on 

STEPHENS. 

Of yoeman blood, but yet of noble birth, 

By genius linked with Burke and Chatham's strain, 
Self-noble, too, by stainless moral worth 

And manly work of hand and heart and brain; 
He gave to heaven a fruitful life on earth 

Of purpose, patience, labor, born in pain. 
In statecraft learned, in counsel prompt and wise, 

In speech commanding, clear, incisive, strong; 
In action, cool and careful of the prize; 

He hated rashness as he hated wrong. 
Before his searching, calm, prophetic eyes 

Did future woes in present errors throng. 
His State and country were to him the same, 

And both he served with love and faith and fame. 

Compare this with his exquisite, unapproachable lines on 
TOOMBS. 

A lion harmless to the weakest lamb, 

Though fiercely scorning like a lamb to be: 



148 A MEMORIAL OF 

His ruling passion to be wild and free 
As winds and waves, with no compulsive calm 
Save God's. To God alone he tuned the psahn, 

Or bowed the head, or uttered prayer or plea; 

To none but God he ever bent the knee, 
Or incense burned, or offered bull or ram. 

His mind was Space and Time in Spirit swung; 
His brain was Reason's self encased in bone ; 

His speech, the Summer Storm with human tongue- 
A storm of logic thundered from a throne. 

O'er all our hearts his scepter might have hung 
Had he but learned to tame and rule his own. 



You will pardon me if I diverge from the strict line of this 
paper to repeat an unsurpassed specimen of necrological writing. 
It is not verse. It is only quasi-poetical. But its style is so 
lofty, its sentiment so exalted, its diction so pure, its choice of 
words so happy, its pathos so dignified, its emotion so calm, the 
virtues of the father so modestly delineated, the son's affection 
so delicately shadowed forth and his grief so gently and unob- 
trusively suggested, that it is well worthy to be ranked with the 
strongest essays, the ablest opinions and the sweetest poems of 
this rare man. It is 

HIS FATHER'S OBITUARY. 

Died, on the 5th of September, 1870, at his home near Clayton, Rabun 
county, James Bleckley, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. 

He was a native of Lincoln county, North Carolina, and removed from 
thence to Rabun in 1826, where he resided until his death. 

He was bred a farmer, and that remained his chief vocation through 
life. At intervals he served the public as sheriff, clerk, ordinary, and 
judge of the county court, offices conferred on him, at successive periods, 
by the people of Rabun. In 1837 he volunteered in the military service and 
as a first lieutenant of cavalry made a campaign in Florida against the 
Indians, under Brigadier Charles H. Nelson. When the Blue Ridge Rail- 
road Company was organized he was elected one of the directors, and 
was still a member of the board at the time of his death. 

He had great solidity of personal character, and its basis was Truth. 
In word and in deed he was a true man. Such was his estimation of 
veracity that he taught his children, as a standing precept, that theft, 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 149 

criminal and degrading as it is, is less abhorrent than deliberate false- 
hood. The reason he gave was, that society has more defenses against 
the violator of property than it has against a violator of the truth, and 
that to reform^ the tongue is a more hopeless task than to restrain the 
hand. 

He was not a member of any church, but he indulged a heartfelt 
charity that embraced all orders and denominations, not of Christians 
only, but of men. His sympathies were not limited by Protestantism nor 
by Catholicism. He felt as a brother towards the followers of Moses 
and Mahomet, as well as towards the disciples of Jesus, and he counted 
himself no stranger to publicans and sinners. He cherished a broad and 
beautiful toleration, grudging to no man the exercise of unrestrained 
opinion or of uncontrolled worship. 

Warned for weeks of his approaching dissolution, he expressed a mod- 
est confidence in the mercy of God, and, without alarm, waited for death 
to come. When it did come, he was engaged in cheerful conversation 
and expired peacefully, with no visible sign of pain. 

Thus passed away my beloved father. 



Judge Bleckley has given us the shortest and simplest analy- 
sis of the English alphabet. It is partly in prose and partly in 
verse. The more one reflects on these lines the greater grows 
the astonishment that any but a trained student of such matters 
should have so accurately analyzed the alphabet, and collated its 
idiosyncrasies. It is well worth a philologist's study, and no one 
ambitious of critical linguistic learning can afford to ignore it: — 

THE ALPHABET 

consists of five letters, five only; and these, by the aid of consonant signs, 
are carried through twenty-one variations. The first letter is O. It has 
no variation. The second is I. It has one variation, which is Y. The 
third is U. It has two variations, Q and W. The fourth is A. It has 
four variations, H, J, K, R. The fifth is E. It has fourteen variations, 
in eight of which the E sound is full and strong, and in six quite thin 
and weak. The eight are B, C, D, G, P, T, V, and Z; the six are F, L, 
M, N, S, and X. Summing up, we have one O, two Fs, three LPs, five 
A's and fifteen E's. Of the whole number O is sV> I rV> U} plus, 
A a fraction less than |, IS | and two over. Properly arranged the 
twenty-six characters would stand thus : O, I, Y, U, Q, W, A, H, J, K, 
R, E, B, C, D, G, P, T, V, Z, F, L, M, N, S, X. This would place first 
the solitary O, and after it others, parents and progency, in due order, 
the related numbers fitly grouped together. 



150 A MEMORIAL OF 

In verse he summarizes thus: 

The lively things at spelling-bees, 

The things that most instruct and please, 

Are not the words, but A, B, C's. 

The busy bees, when they have met, 

Must take a look at the alphabet. 

To see it in its legal view 

Is now the thing we have to do. 

On law of letters we must draw 

To give the letter of the law. 

In O, I, U, A, E, is found, 

Condensed, yet clear, each ruling sound. 

In every case the lawyer quotes 

As good sound-law these five head-notes. 

Of one of these, the selfish O, 
Its lonely note is all we know ; 
No more than once, to keenest ears, 
A tone or trace of it appears. 
A bachelor sound it is, that wails 
The doleful fate of single males. 
No wonder, in their dismal woe, 
The tune they sing is only "O" ! 

Not quite so lone and chill is I, 
Its one companion being Y. 

And twice as tender must be U, 
Which pairs with W and with Q. 

And wider still expandeth A, 
It spreads to R, H, J, and K. 

But far more facile, frank and free, 

That generous note, the peerless E. 

It leans to B, C, D and G, 

To P and T and V and Z ; 

And then, with slight and gentle stress, 

It touches F, L, M, N, S; 

And, clinging still, till silence checks, 

A whispered kiss it gives to X. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 151 

After Judge Bleckley's resignation of the Chief Justiceship, 
nearly a year ago, he retired to his mountain home in Clarkesville 
and announced his permanent retirement from the profession of 
law. Here it was he wrote and gave to the public his "Fare- 
well to the Law," the concluding lines of which remind us of 
the better specimens of his poetry. 

This brings us to the last composition noticed here. 

The Judge had been once before on the Georgia Supreme 
bench — a hard-worked, over-crowded, under-paid court — for 
several years, and was tired. He resigned and read from the 
bench this, his last opinion during his first incumbency, which 
will be found reported in the 64th Georgia, 452, and is entitled 
"In the Matter of Rest."* 

For its length it is Judge Bleckley's best production. The 
last stanza should be burned into the heart of every young man. 
It is the essence of common sense, the conclusion of human 
experience, the final deduction of philosophy, and the ultimate 
dogma of religion. 



Is apology needed for traveling out of the beaten track as I 
have done to-day? Is it not well to preserve in our permanent 
records something of the foremost living Georgia member of 
our noble profession? Would we not now highly prize similar 
evidences of the mental work and characteristics of Lumpkin, 
and Nisbet, and Warner — that triumvirate of judges who 
moulded Georgia's judicial opinions in the halcyon days of 
Georgia lawyers? 

Are we not too careless of the fame of our great men? 
Stephens will live forever in his "War Between the States," that 
masterly vindication of the South's position in the great conflict. 
Hill, the mighty, the defender of the Constitution and the Union, 
will live in his "Notes on the Situation" and a few great speeches 
which fortunately have been preserved. The rugged honesty 
and strong sense of Warner is perpetually embalmed in his 
Supreme Court opinions. The classical learning, the brilliant 



* See page 27. 



152 A MEMORIAL OF 

imagination, the extended legal research, of the first Lumpkin is 
similarly recorded. So, too, are those masterly judicial opin- 
ions of Nisbet, clear as a sunbeam, unsurpassed in strength of 
statement, freighted with a treasure of legal lore. 

But after this what can be said? What has become of those 
majestic tornadoes of commingled eloquence and logic which 
swept the forum and the hustings when Toombs lifted up his 
voice? Where are the sermons of Pierce, the incarnation of 
grace, the most perfect specimen of manly beauty, whose unsur- 
passed oratory was the apotheosis of human speech? Where are 
Dooly's wit, Berrien's oratory, Forsyth's speeches, Cobb's states- 
manship — the prowess of many more whose glories are for- 
gotten and whose names are fast becoming fading memories ? 

Gone, all gone, save here and there a fragment; just enough 
of the ruins to suggest the magnificence of the temple destroyed. 

Our great men owe it to posterity, if not to themselves, to 
preserve the records of their works. Our smaller men owe it to 
the profession to which we in common belong, to aid in per- 
petuating the fame of the greater. If we cannot help build the 
temple of Georgia's fame, we can at least lift up here and there 
a candle by whose aggregate light, though singly feeble, those 
who follow us may be enabled to see somewhat of the temple's 
glory. 

And so, to-day we place upon the permanent records of this 
Association, whose reports are sought after by libraries all over 
the country, and whose few remaining volumes, a century from 
now, will be worth their weight in gold, a half-tone sketch of 
one phase of the intellectual life of him who, leaving active life 
without a blot of wrong upon its pages, sits down at the foot of 
the mountains in whose shadow he spent his boyhood days, 
mindful of the advice of Cicero who recommended to old age 
otium cum dignitate, followed by the respect of the public, the 
admiration of the bar, and the love of all who know him; who, 
tried by the test prescribed by the Sinless One, may enter the 
Kingdom of Heaven; for, in guilelessness of heart and gentle- 
ness of life, he is, indeed, a little child! 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 153 



POEMS 

[The following collection of Judge Bleckley's poems is substantially 
that of Judge Akin published in the twelfth Georgia Bar Association 
Report (1895) as a part of the foregoing article. Several other poems 
appear in the different articles published herein.] 



ON GENERAL HENRY L. BENNING. 

Poor Southern eyes, already red 
With weeping for your noble dead, 
If tears are left you yet to shed, 
Give some to soothe this latest woe — 
For gallant Benning let them flow. 

Ah, death that spared him in the fight, 
Has struck, in peace, a Georgia knight — 
As knightly as the proudest lord 
That ever lifted lance or sword ; 
No truer, braver chief than he 
Adorned the ancient chivalry. 

For firmness in the battle shock, 
His comrades said he was a rock; 
Old Rock, they said, and his command 
(Whoever fled) were sure to stand; 
And never was that hope betrayed 
By Rock himself, or his brigade. 

The tricks of war he did not learn ; 
In stubborn valor, grim and stern, 
He trusted as the pious priest 
Reposeth in the blood of Christ ; 
To him it seemed no fight could fail 
If not a single heart would quail. 

When vainer warriors would assume 

The wreath, and star, and sash, and plume, 

He moved among his soldiers gray, 

As plain and unadorned as they; 

Nor cared to shine, or to excel, 

Except in doing duty well. 



154 A MEMORIAL OF 

In peace it was his lot to die; 
In peace, O, may his ashes lie ! 
And sweetest peace, while ages roll, 
Attend his noble, manly soul! 



OMNIPRESENCE. 

We deem them more awake than we : 
Our hope and faith have eyes to see 
Their disembodied shapes as far 
As to the most exalted star; 
And still we feel how nigh they are ! 
To spirit-essence, as to thought, 
All places are together brought, 
For distance, to a soul is nought, 
In sooth we well may wonder why 
We tell departing friends good-bye ! 

To go ! to stay ! The two are one — 
As we may think of yonder sun, 

Explore the sky, the sea, the land, 
And not remove from where we stand, 
Nor stir a single grain of sand. 
We need not fear our loved and lost 
Have to a distant country crossed, 
Or on dividing waves are tossed; 
We may be sure they linger here; 
That if remote, they yet are near. 



MEDORA. 



But life immortal thus to bear — 
To be forever everywhere, 

Is not enough — will not suffice : 
Existence is but half the prize; 
In vain the dead awake, arise. 
If bliss, while all the ages roll, 
Is lost or missing to the soul, 
'Tis happiness completes the whole : 

To know of which must needs be read 
The record left us by the dead. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 155 

*Medora, now to thine we turn, 
And, lo, how all the letters burn ! 

We see some grace or virtue shine — 

Some likeness to a life divine — 

Some nobleness — in every line. 
And, first, (how precious is the word!) 
The truthful writing doth record, 
She loved, and, foremost, loved the Lord ; 

And then, with passion thus refined, 

She loved her neighbor and mankind. 

Affection was the fount and force 
In which her conduct had its source : 

Of self she took but little thought; 

For others' bliss she daily wrought 

And often blessed, unseen, unsought 
Not long or loud did suitors plead, 
She gave a gift or did a deed 
On slight and silent hints of need ; 

Her happiness was at its tide 

When others' wants were best supplied. 

And hers was love adorned with light, 
She made the stream of blessing bright, 

She knew how gracious is a grace 

Bestowed with manner, word and face 

Befitting person, time and place. 
Her bounty reaching lowest down, 
Was never darkened by a frown, 
Nor hardened with an icy tone : 

Her tact in goodness so excelled, 

The "poor and proud" were not repelled. 

While health and fortune cheered the day, 
She gave her very self away; 

Her air, her look, her laugh, her tone, 

To those on whom her favor shone, 

Seemed less as hers than as their own. 
The rudest guest, when at her board, 
Could be, or seem to be, a lord; 
And cowards might confront a sword ; 

So pleased were all — so much at ease, 

Each felt that he, himself, could please. 



' The wife of the late Colonel James D. Waddell. 



156 A MEMORIAL OF 

When trouble came, and health declined, 
A light less glad, but not less kind, 
Intense with holy heat, was shed 
Through all she did, or looked or said, 
Withdrawing not till she was dead. 
Remembered now, it seems to pale 
Not more than solar beams must fail 
When shaded by a sable veil, 

Or when the sun, in nightly swoon, 
Is seen reflected from the moon. 



THE FARMER. 

The farmer, be he poor or rich, 

As high as prince, or low as peasant, 

His calling still is one in which 
Poetic themes are ever present. 

Yet strangely does the farmer deal 
With forms of rare poetic beauty; 

Their high enchantment not to feel 
He deems a kind of rustic duty. 

Sun, sky, and cloud, frost, wind and rain, 
In one brief word he groups together— 

Their worth to cotton, grass and grain 
Is all included in the weather! 

The seasons which to most impart 
A hint for smiling, or for weeping, 

Awake no passion in his heart, 

Except for planting, tilling, reaping. 

Diurnal changes — night and day, 

So rich to sight and contemplation — 

Pass him, unheeded, save to sway 
His meals and rest and occupation. 

The very crops he loves to rear — 
Poetic essence fills their being — 

The stem, the leaf, the bloom, the ear, 
All teem with beauty past his seeing. 






LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 157 

Ah ! noble is the farmer's toil ! 

Its fruit a priceless boon and blessing; 
But what he gathers from the soil, 

Is not most worthy of possessing. 

A subtle beauty, sweet and fair, 

Which nothing can subdue or shatter, 
Forever floats on earth and air, 

And clings to every shape of matter. 

This beauty courts the farmer's eyes, 

He spends his life to it the nearest; 
And all he wants to make him wise, 

Is but to see and hold it dearest. 



BROADWAY. 



From early dawn till after dark 

A current flows towards the Park, 

And full as fast, the other way, 

A counter-current to the Bay : 

This mighty streami, from side to side, 

Is thus a double living tide. 

Ye restless ones who, to and fro, 
In such wild hurry come and go, 
Who run in haste both up and down 
This roaring river of the Town, 
Say what it is ye all do seek, 
From day to day and week to week; 
What treasure of the heart or mind, 
Ye seek, but never seem to find? 

To judge your purpose by your speed, 
It must be something great indeed ; 
'Tis surely not a rash surmise 
That life eternal is your prize : 
No meaner aim, me thinks, could you 
With ardor such as this pursue. 
And yet, alas, if truth were told, 
The most of you are after gold ! 



158 A MEMORIAL OF 



FAITH. 



Cast out into space 

For life and for death ; 

No ultimate base, 

No bottom beneath, 

No limit or bound 

Above or around; 

No wall at the side 

Or roof overhead, 

No cover to hide 

Me, living or dead ; 

No refuge for thought or for sense, 

Yet I will not despair 

As I drift through the air, 

Afloat in the boundless immense. 

In the depths of the night 

Cometh faith without light, 

Cometh faith without sight, 

And I trust the great sovereign unknown ; 

No finite or definite throne, 

But the infinite, nameless, unthinkable ONE. 

I cannot, nor need I, define 

The blessing he keepeth in store ; 

His purpose I know is divine, 

And why should I care to know more? 

The what and the where and the when 

Must needs be uncertain to men ; 

For the future, if distant or near. 

Lets none of its secrets appear. 

No definite hope may endure, 

No favorite bliss be secure, 

Not even existence be sure, 

But the something that ought to befall 

Will haopen at last unto all. 



THE BRIDE OF HOPE. 

The Future, pure and peerless one, 
That seemeth nigh while still afar, 
By day more splendid than the sun, 






LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 159 

By night more precious than a star; 
Fit bride for Hope, in truth, is she, 
The pure and peerless Is-to-be. 

And Hope, alive to all her charms, 
Holds out his fond, impatient arms, 
And strives with over ardent haste, 
To clasp her unsubstantial waist; 
But ever does the maid retire, 
And laugh at Hope and his desire. 

More constant still because denied, 
Hope deems the nuptials must be near; 
And so he woos no other bride 
But waits for her from year to year; 
Of all blind lovers most absurd, 
To think his bliss is but deferred. 

He does not know and cannot see 
That she, the charming Is-to-be, 
Within another world abides, 
Apart from this where Hope resides, 
And that if into this she came 
She would no longer be the same. 



FEAR. 



It seemeth fit that I resign 
My will, O Lord! — my will to thine. 
But how can I renounce my breath, 
Relinquish life and welcome death? 

II. 

My life, myself, they seem as one, 

Nor can I feel that they are twain. 
Thy will is death. When it is done, 

Will self — my vital self — remain? 
Forgive me if, with reverent fear, 

I urge a theme as this so dread; 
My first concern my foremost care, 

Is, shall I live when I am dead? 



160 A MEMORIAL OF 

And, Lord, do not regard me less, 

And let it not augment my woe, 
That I the naked truth confess, 

Which is, / know I do not know. 
Affirm I not, nor can deny, 

Nor can at doubt or faith arrive — 
I know not what it is to die, 

Or what may perish or survive. 
And hence the fear that rises first; 

It bodeth not of peace or strife, 
Of being blest or being curst, 

But only of the lapse of life. 
It hints that here, perchance, is all ; 

That I am of but little worth — 
That out of being I may fall, 

Uncared for, when I quit the earth. 
A thousand times the hint I spurn, 

And strive its whisper to defy; 
But still the question will return, 

What happens when we come to die? 



III. 



Another fear my heart assails ; 

Another peril shows its frown, 

And bears my feeble courage down. 
Suppose existence never fails, 

Will mine be one of pain or bliss — 

A worse or better state than this? 
Ah, what would be the good or gain 

To sense, emotion, will or thought, 
If fall I into deathless pain 

Instead of falling into naught? 
And here, again, my sight is veiled; 
I know not if I be impaled 

On some foregone adverse decree, 
Or what to dread, or what expect, 
If I am free, but not elect, 

Or what my danger still may be 

If I am both elect and free. 
With holy law, unholy fact, 

My own misdeeds and Adam's taint, 
With sins of blood and thought and act, 
What wonder if I fear and faint? 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 161 



IV. 



I see, on either hand, a cave 

That opens downward through the grave. 

Ten thousand heavens were in vain, 

For hell may be a hell of pain, 

Or that which seems a lower deep — 

The hell of everlasting sleep ; 

And thus the chance of bliss for me, 

If lots were cast, is one in three. 

The loss of self, or loss of peace ! 

Twin perils now to me so nigh! 
Until they cease, or seem to cease, 

I pass all minor dangers by. 



Between these hells of sleep and flame 
I do confess myself to blame : 
Like Adam, I have disobeyed, 
And I, like Adam, am afraid. 



CATOOSA. 



Two miles from car, and steam, and rail, 

Catoosa hovers in the vale — 

A wild, secluded, shady site, 

Where three romantic dells unite. 

Up these to East, and South and North, 

Three idle, rustic roads wind forth, 

And through the vale, from East to West, 

The waters of a brook are pressed. 

Anigh the brook, on either marge, 
Full fifty living springs discharge. 
'Twould seem that nature's healing craft 
Had here put all her drugs on draft, 
And bidden, from the earth outpour 
Her precious pharmaceutic store : 
Profusely offered, and in haste, 
Enough for use and much to waste, 
Her wealth of hygienic flood 
E'en medicates the sand and mud. 



162 A MEMORIAL OF 

Some chemic Muse alone could sing 
The properties that mark each spring — 
Their virtues, and (if such) their faults; 
Their metals, acids, gases, salts; 
Suffice it now some few to name — 
A few best known to common fame : 
Magnesia, iron, alum (prime), 
Soda, sulphur, iodine and lime. 
The chief are these, though many more 
Hath science found, and counted o'er. 

And here the kind, benignant Jove 

Hath spread a wide, Arcadian grove. 

Beneath its boughs, in fount or pool, 

The waters keep forever cool ; 

Broad walks that serve each spring to find, 

Along the surface turn and wind ; 

And here and there, where seemeth best, 

Convenient seats invite to rest; 

And those who seek embowered ease 

May bowers find among the trees. 

For pleasure, health, or e'en for love, 

No spot excels this leafy grove. 

To northward mounts a swelling crest, 
With slopes inclining South and West; 
Adown the slopes extends a lawn, 
In light and shadow like the dawn. 
In native forest trees arrayed, 
With planted growth for deeper shade, 
All thick with branches interwove, 
It stretches down and joins the grove. 

From highest angle of the lawn 
Two nearly equal lines are drawn, 
The shorter, by abrupt decline, 
Descending to a lower line; 
The three, rectangled, well declare 
Three faces of a hollow square. 
Along these lines, and fronting on 
Three shady margins of the lawn, 
Is reared in light and graceful style, 
Catoosa's architectural pile. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 163 

You would not deem such vast hotels 

Were here among the hills and dells, 

Or that so many cottage walls 

Were group'd about hotels and halls. 

Full half a thousand guests, at least, 

Might lodge and lounge, and dance and feast; 

And room there is for all to play 

At billiards, bowls, and light croquet. 

For station take the chief hotel, 
And view the charming landscape well. 
A castle, stript of roof and crown, 
Its walls oblong, but broken down, 
Some more, some less, except the grand 
Old corner turrets left to stand — 
Such castle if of vast extent, 
Might well the valley represent. 
Three thousand paces over crossed 
Would scarce its outer lines exhaust. 

Two hills in front as towers stand, 
And two in rear hold like command; 
The four suggest the turrets tall 
At angles of a castle wall. 
Between each pair a gap is cleft. 
Before, behind, on right and left. 
The two cut low, in gashes deep, 
Their faces bold and bare and steep, 
Enclose the narrow, rugged seam 
Along which flows the valley stream. 

Look near, and all is green and gay, 
And fresh and bright, as middle-May. 
Ah, here is life ! the eyes contrive 
To gladden sight with things alive. 
To every quarter turn your head, 
And naught appears that seemeth dead, 
Save stubble stems and sand and rocks, 
And gathered wheat disposed in shocks. 
On all the till'd and tillage ground 
Few dead or dying trees are found, 
Not half a score, perhaps if you 
Did search the valley through and through. 



164 A MEMORIAL OF 

Life, life, abounds, both seen and heard, 
For every bough supports a bird, 
And warbled songs your ears delight 
From morning till the fall of night. 
Not even then does feathered strain 
Subside till morn is up again ; 
When eve is dusk and soft and still, 
Then cries the plaintive whip-poor-will — 
A minstrel of the night and wood 
That cheereth not, yet doeth good. 

Ye favored ones to whom are lent 
Both time and money to be spent; 
Yet, who in crowded cities meet, 
And swelter in the dust and heat ; 
And, hence, are vexed — Contented not, 
Despite the bounty of your lot, 
Come hither to this cool retreat, 
And make your summer bliss complete. 
Come now, for fear a change of state 
May make a future day too late ; 
Ye cannot look behind the veil 
And see when purse or life may fail ; 
If fortune from your grasp should fly, 
Or you, by some mischance, should die, 
Your never having been here yet, 
Would prove a long and last regret. 

And, likewise, ye who, having wealth, 
Can use it not for lack of health, — 
Whose blood and nerves and vital force 
Are failing in their wonted course, — 
Who need, to mend — perchance to live — 
The aid that healing waters give — 
Come, come, where fifty fountains flow, 
With each some virtue to bestow. 

And ye who are in body whole 

But pine with sickness of the soul; 

Who droop, despond, and know the pain 

Of wearing out a life in vain, — 

Who muse and murmur, gaze and sigh, 

And vaguely wish that you could die, — 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 165 

Come here and find a quick relief 
For all your felt or fancied grief. 
Ye, too, a large, laborious train, 
Who strive some leisure time to gain, — 
Who, lacking pelf, essay to foil 
The ills of want by honest toil, 
In office, store or shop confined, 
O'erspent in muscle and in mind, — 
Who never let exertion fail 
Till eye is dim and brow is pale, — 
As soon as from your little hoard 
The needful cost you can afford, 
Let brain and body, overtaxed, 
Be here disburdened and relaxed r 
These woods and waters, breezes, balms, 
Will make you skip like kids and lambs. 

And ye who are already gay, 
As fresh and light as morning spray, — 
Whose eyes shoot sparks at every glance, 
Whose feet are restless for the dance, — 
Whose tongues are laden high with words, 
As careless as the chant of birds ; 
And who, while bounding pulses beat, 
Feel youth is strong and life is sweet, — 
Assemble here, in merry throngs, 
For mirth and laughter, music, songs, 
And dance and feast, and all the cheer 
That wait on sport and fancy here. 

And ye, discordant with the last 
Who represent the awful past : 
The staid and sober, grave and wise, 
Who frown at folly, and despise 
As vices close allied to crimes 
The levities of modern times, — 
For even you is here a space, 
So uncontracted is the place, — 
So widely spread the ample bounds 
Of halls and cottages and grounds. 
In public, when it doth behoove, 
You may appear, look on, reprove, 
And then, secluded, may retire 
To any distance you desire; 



166 A MEMORIAL OF 

No narrow limits cramp your will 
You may act sage or hermit still. 
E'en should it be your sad conceit 
To only meditate and eat, 
You here will goodly diet find 
For both the stomach and the mind. 

Bid silence now make end of speech, 
And mutely let an arm outreach 
And beckon with persuasive hand 
To all the lovers of the land ; 
Or if a vocal chord be stirred, 
But whisper every muffled word ; 
For lovers are a tender brood, 
And cannot bear a sound that's rude. 
With breathing low as breath can fall, 
I murmur thus to them a call : 
Ye multitudes who know no ease, 
Whose health is but a slow disease, 
Whose wealth is but a beggar's plea, 
Whose happiness is misery, 
Who, what to do, or where to go, 
Or what you want, do never know, 
Here, here, you may obtain repose; 
Yea, rest is here for belles and beaux. 



C^SARISM. 



Imperial Caesar of the West, 

Appear and make thy country blest; 

The people wait in hope and fear; 

Delay thou not — appear ! appear ! 

Like Hebrews in the days of Saul, 

We ask a king, a king for all. 

No longer caring to be free, 

We bow the spirit, bend the knee. 

Whoever o'er Columbia reigns 

Will have the gem of earth's domains ; 

Such splendid empire is there none, 

From rising unto setting sun. 

Three thrones have here a lost domain, 

The thrones of England, France and Spain; 

United now are all the three, 

And look for future prince to thee. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 167 

Come, quickly come, and hold the helm, 

In State so vast — a matchless realm. 

In thee, great Captain, will we own 

A true restorer of the throne — 

The throne in bitter strife hewn down 

By brave old Captain Washington. 

Successor thou, if prayers be heard, 

To George of England, George the Third. 



MOTHER. 



One of the wounded, as he was being carried from the cars, implored 
those around him to send for his mother. That was all he could say. 
No name, no regiment, nothing — it was "mother." He was shot through 
the lungs with a minnie ball. 

"My mother !" feebly sounded 
From his lips so thin and white; 
No question we propounded 
Could other words excite — 
We but knew that he was wounded 
In the late terrific fight. 

In vain, with kind intention, 

We sought to learn his name, 
Or press'd him but to mention 

The State from which he came — 
He seemed to give attention, 

But his answer was the same. 

"My mother! Oh, my mother!" 

This oft repeated call 
Was all our dying brother 

Could utter in his fall ; 
No thought of any other, 

His mother — she was all. 

We know not who or whither 

May be the gentle one 
That sent to perish hither, 

This noble-hearted son ; 
But, Oh! may God be with her 

When she hears what war has done. 



168 A MEMORIAL OF 



MOUTAIN FLOWERS. 

Among steep rocks where wild deer climb, 

And waters leap in flowing, 
Are always, in the summer time, 

Sweet mountain flowers growing. 

To them are purest dews allowed — 

The precious early draining 
From patches of unfinished cloud, 

Too light and thin for raining. 

A rainbow that the torrent weaves, 
From spray and beams of morning, 

Paints all their tender tinted leaves, 
And gives them rich adorning. 

The fragrance of the upper air — 

The incense nearest heaven — 
Perfumes them with an odor rare, 

By breath of angels given. 

To rocks and rainbow and the clouds, 

Retreat, in sultry hours ; 
From shops and stores and streets and crowds, 

Go up, and gather flowers. 



FAREWELL TO THE LAW. 

Farewell, my liege, beloved and long, long-served, good-bye, 
My leave I take and forth I go witfe wept and sobbing sigh, 
Which, now condensed to pensive dew, is trembling in my eye. 

How oft in legal combat met have I, at low or lofty bar, 
Contending suitors helped to wage or ward the fierce forensic war, 
When rushed the battle horses and flew the battle car. 

For more than one full decade, with pale, unsandaled feet, 

In pure and spotless ermine I mused on Georgia's seat, 

And righteous judgment rendered between the Tares and Wheat. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 169 

My grand majestic master, vice-gerent here of God, 
I quit thy special service, but stay beneath thy rod, 
An old and humble servant, uncovered and unshod. 



TWO CITIES. 

The one is a city of life, 

Of labor and love, of anger and strife, 

Of weeping, and laughter, and jest; 

The other — a host without breath, 

A city of silence and death, 

A city in peace and at rest. 

Vast cities are these, are they both, as you see — 

The city of A and the city of B ; 

And the reason they lie 

To each other so nigh, 

The sole reason why, 

Is, the people of A are destined to die, 

And the people of B await them hard by. 

No rivals these two, but the dearest of friends, 

Yet each with the other for numbers contends ; 

In spite of their efforts at keeping away, 

Some scores of the transient sojourners in A 

Transfer their abode into B every day. 

Indeed, whosoever will follow each street, 

And the lanes, and the alleys, to where they all meet, 

And make his survey of the city complete, 

Will find that Life's avenues, crooked or straight, 

At first or at last, either early or late, 

All empty themselves through Death's open gate. 

Quite handsome and fine is the city of A; 
From suburbs to center so busy and gay, 
Through half of the night and all of the day ; 
'Tis truly a wonderful place to behold ; 
Its wealth is unmeasured, its treasures untold, 
It flashes with jewels and glitters with gold. 

How costly is life, what countless expense, 
To temper the blood and comfort the sense, 






170 A MEMORIAL OF 

And nourish the mind and chasten the breast, 
And keep the heart ruled in its stormy unrest; 
But death unto all is offered so cheap ; 
There's nothing to pay for falling asleep, 
Save closing the eyes and ceasing to weep. 

In sheen, or in splendor, the cities must strike 
Your thought as unequal and strangely unlike; 
For one is a city whose mansions are found 
Above, while the other's are under the ground. 

How simple the latter will seem as you pass ; 
Some bushes and flowers, some ivy and grass, 
To shelter the borders or freshen the sod; 
Some fragments of marble, or marble in mass, 
Inscribed with the virtues and names of the dead, 
The griefs of the living, the tears they have shed, 
Their hopes, and their trust in the mercy of God, — 
Too dim and uncertain, perhaps, to be read. 

Short panels of iron, or timber, or stone, 
Enclose certain sleepers and keep them alone ; 
The family feeling, still soft and severe, 
Presides at the tomb — its spirit is here; 
Each bosom that bleedeth, each sorrowful heart, 
Would group its own loved ones from others apart; 
Exclusive, alike, are the humble and proud, 
They cannot endure to be lost in the crowd; 
In death as in life, man's self-hood will cry, 
Abide you out yonder — Behold here am I. 

Two cities we know, and some news we have heard, 
By priest and by prophet, good news of a third; 
The tidings they bring us we cherish as true, 
But faith is not knowledge ; — we know only two ; 
Full knowledge direct of the city of C 
Seems not for possession by you or by me, 
Till, parting from A, we have come into B. 
Nor at this should we murmur, or sigh, or repine; 
Man's weakness, as well as his strength, is divine; 
The day is no better bestowed than the night, 
And darkness is precious as well as the light. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 171 



CAUSATION. 

[This poem, with the introduction was read by Judge Bleckley as the 
President's Address at the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Georgia Bar 
Association, Atlanta, July 31, 1894. — Reprinted from Annual Report.] 

INTRODUCTORY. 

Gentlemen of the Association: 

If I could realize my own ideal, whatever I produce would be in vol- 
ume a fragment, in thought a volume. My model for all things that 
involve expression is condensed head-notes rather than expanded opinions. 
The labor of production should be done by the producer and not thrown 
upon the consumer. By labor I mean thought-work, not handicraft or 
alternate contraction and expansion of the muscles. A problem of first 
importance for the intellectual artist to solve is, how to put the most soul 
into the least body, how to represent the largest bulk of the immaterial 
by the smallest mass of the material. As I am no artist of any sort, of 
course I must fail, but attempts are educative, not only to those who 
make, but to those who witness them. 

ADDRESS. 

CAUSATION. 

The laws of thought, which must preside 

In rightly judging other laws, 
Make sure that Reason shall decide 

Existence was without a cause. 
An antecedent purely naught 
Has no admittance into thought. 

Whoever seeks a cause for all 

Will vainly seek what none can find ; 

Causation has to such a call 

No answer for bewildered mind. 

Within the whole must cause abide ; 

The sum of all has no outside. 

Existence scan without control, 

And one of these must be its chart — 
Eternal must have been the whole, 






172 A MEMORIAL OF 

Or else a part has caused a part. 
Causation, now confined to change, 
Could thus have had creative range. 

While every change must have a cause 
The cause of change must be supreme 

The pre-existing source of laws 
That fetter things of less esteem. 

Though subject must the sequent be, 

All primal being must be free. 

Applied to change, causation stands, 
Full crowned with universal sway; 

Applied to being, its commands 
Beginning only could obey. 

No sway of cause, no causal rod, 

Could be extended over God. [Applause.] 



TRUTH IN THOUGHT AND EMOTION. 



An Address by Judge Logan E. Bleckley to the Literary Societies 

of Mercer University. Delivered at 

Macon, Georgia, June 29, 1886. 



TRUTH IN THOUGHT AND EMOTION. 

There is no life but thought and feeling. Whatsoever, 
whether act or substance, is not convertible, and ultimately 
converted into one of these forms of life is dead. Our sole 
business on earth or in Heaven is to think and feel, and cause 
thought and feeling in other beings. If we cross the Ocean of 
Death, not as ships in ballast, but as freighted vessels, we shall 
have on board thought and emotion — nothing else. And the 
value of the cargo in the port beyond will be measured by mass 
and quality, and the test of quality will be truth. It should be 
one object here, if not the chief object, to put up for export, 
packed in our faculties and character — in our mental and 
moral being, as much as possible of true thought and emotion, 
mixed with as little as possible of false thought and emotion. 
It follows that we should not, by our own fault, be narrow and 
contracted, intellectually or morally, for no one can have 
thought and emotion on a large scale, and of great worth, with- 
out a wide range of thought and feeling. We need breadth, 
both of thought and sympathy, and that sort of breadth which 
makes room for multitude and magnitude, number and degree, 
many and much. What we want with mental discipline and 
culture, is to enable us to have, so far as may be, many thoughts 
on many subjects, all of them correct, none of them low, and 
only a due proportion of them light or little. What we want 
with moral discipline and culture, is to enable us to experience 
in due degree of intensity, so far as may be, many emotions, all 
of them pure in their nature, and appropriate to the occasion, 
none of them vile, vicious or malignant. 

Correctness of thought is conformity of thought to things, 
and of thought to thought. I have never met any person who 
believed he did not know that which he knew ; but nothing is 
more common than for us to think we know what we do not. 
We never mistake our knowledge for ignorance, except perhaps 



176 A MEMORIAL OF 

in extreme metaphysics, but we constantly mistake our ignor- 
ance for knowledge. And the remedy for this, so far as there 
is a remedy, is the practice of mental candor until it becomes a 
fixed habit, the cultivation of an intellectual conscience. He 
whose opinions are all convictions is as reckless, intellectually, 
as he is, morally, whose assertions are all categorical. Convic- 
tion has no more right to go beyond evidence and just infer- 
ence, than statement has to go beyond conviction. A man should 
be hardly less careful not to deceive himself in thought, than 
he is not to deceive others by expression. It is as hurtful to truth 
to decide when we ought to doubt, as to doubt when we ought 
to decide. We should feel no reluctance to confess our ignor- 
ance, always to ourselves, and when circumstances call for it 
to others. The phrase, "I don't know," honestly and fairly 
used, humbles us, but when so used it covers much the larger 
part of truth. We should use it honestly and fairly, both to 
ourselves and others ; always, however, remembering that we 
are not to deny, even in thought, the existence of a thing 
because we do not know of its existence. It is the lack of such 
knowledge that constitutes ignorance. This lack is the very 
stuff of which ignorance is made. If we knew all existences, 
taking the term as including both the actual and the potential, 
we should know everything, for there is nothing else to know. 
We have no more warrant for dogmatizing at random nega- 
tively than affirmatively. The forms of language force us very 
often to be dogmatic in expression, but this does not oblige us 
to be dogmatic in thought. If we attempted to communicate in 
discourse all the qualifications, and all the shades and degrees of 
qualifications, that we realize, or ought to realize in thinking, 
we should only perplex or mislead our hearers. It has been 
remarked that no one ever means precisely what he says, for 
no one ever says precisely what he means. Doubt is a state 
of mind proper to any high degree of uncertainty. It is a ques- 
tion whether anything is uncertain, in and of itself — whether 
all contingency is not in knowledge, none of it in the objects of 
knowledge. The so-called contingent events of to-morrow are, 
at this moment, uncertain to the whole human race, but if they 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 177 

are known to God they have certainty relatively to him. He 
never doubts. Whether we will or not, we must live with uncer- 
tainty and die with it. Relatively to us, it extends over a part 
of truth as surely as certainty does over another part. To 
doubt too much is to carry over, by self-deception, the certain 
into the uncertain ; to doubt too little, is to carry over, by self- 
deception, the uncertain into the certain. Not to do either, 
should be a matter of solicitude with every lover of 
truth. The repose of conviction is very desirable, and 
very seductive. To doubt is never pleasant, often painful, 
sometimes agonizing. And, in so far as this prompts 
to inquiry and urges us to decision, it is very useful ; but 
when it induces us to decide without inquiry or evidence, or 
without the proper use of them, the result is like declaring vic- 
tory before fighting the battle. If we were so constituted that 
we could not doubt, what security would there be for truth? 
What could more cripple the mind than to deprive it either of 
the power of doubting or the power of believing? To face 
frankly and fairly the terrors of uncertainty requires courage. 
Indeed, to think at all, responsibly, rationally, and with abso- 
lute fidelity to truth, upon many subjects, requires the highest 
degree of courage. It is easier, perhaps, to stand before a 
loaded cannon, and see the match applied, than to adopt a con- 
clusion utterly destructive to past convictions long cherished, 
and to the authority upon which they rested, in a matter of 
vital interest and of personal concern. Rebellion against 
authority in fundamental knowledge or opinion, is more daring 
than rebellion against authority in government. Nor is the 
rebel thinker often nearer to sound speculation than the dyna- 
miter is to sound politics. Thought is not free, and never can 
be, in the sense of being exempt from authority, for it is not and 
never can be, exempt from the sway of evidence. Authority is 
one species of evidence, and is often, on a great multitude of 
questions, the most convincing of any to which we have access. 
Undue submission to it is unfriendly to truth, but a high respect 
for it is one of our greatest safeguards — in fact, taking the 
whole of life together, the very greatest. We are bound to 



178 A MEMORIAL OF 

examine its claims fairly in the particular instance, and to defer 
to it where better evidence is wanting. Authority which forbids 
examination is arrogant and despotic, and in that article has no 
right to obedience, but its jurisdiction to decide for us until we 
can examine and decide for ourselves on wider evidence is 
indubitable. And in any serious contest with it, the wider 
evidence should be examined in the true critical spirit, and 
conclusions be drawn slowly and cautiously in the inductive 
spirit. To cast off authority on any less evidence than what 
would or should set up a new authority, with principles adverse 
to the old, is rash. He who supersedes existing authority 
should have reasons sufficient to ordain and consecrate a suc- 
cessor. The force that rightfully conquers a sovereign ought 
to be strong enough to rule his dominions. 

As there must be perpetual authority in the State, so, in 
these ages, must there be perpetual authority in all the great 
domains of thought. There can be no interregnum without 
anarchy. The public coronation may be postponed, but amongst 
dead or living thinkers, writers, speakers, etc., authority (some 
for one department, some for another), crowned or to be 
crowned, always exists. And a general overthrow of the reign- 
ing authority in any department is never accomplished without 
founding and ultimately setting up a new authority in its room. 
There is no destruction of the throne, but only a perpetual suc- 
cession by which one ruler comes on after another has been 
deposed. In our personal, individual thinking, allegiance to the 
reigning authority, de facto, should not be withdrawn, except 
for reasons which, in our serious, deliberate opinion, formed 
on full and fair investigation, would justify dethronement. 
From the necessity of the case, while authority judges us, we 
have to judge authority. In the first place, to recognize author- 
ity at all, we have to select, usually, amongst various claimants, 
the true de facto authority on the given subject. In the next 
place, we can rarely make this selection without the aid of inter- 
mediate authority, and must consequently select, first, that 
authority. We thus elect our own authority, intermediate and 
final; and to this power of election, is necessarily incident the 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 179 

power of impeachment. If we could not impeach authority 
once recognized by us, try the impeachment and pronounce 
judgment, we should be bound in thought more firmly by the 
thought of another than by our own thought. So long as we 
can change our opinion, we can change our authority, that is, 
we can discard our former ruler, and transfer our outward alle- 
giance elsewhere. As to our inward, ultimate allegiance, that 
is due, at least from every enlightened, cultivated man, to his 
own mind. If he is not faithful to his own best thoughts, his 
fidelity to thought at all cannot be trusted. But this includes 
rather than excludes, the acceptance of aid from other minds, 
for to be true to the mind of final resort, is to allow a just influ- 
ence to the discoveries, the information, the arguments, the 
opinions and due authority of other minds. Intelligence is no 
monopoly — no close corporation, but a great republic. Mind 
is not solitary and self-sustaining, but gregarious, dependent 
and cooperative. It is not for every individual mind to grasp 
truth for itself, but each is, and must be, supplemented in its 
powers by the powers of many others. 

Moreover, we are not to depend on intellect alone to yield 
us correct thoughts on every subject. The emotional nature is 
a large factor in the elaboration of thought, speculative and 
piactical, on many of the most weighty subjects that engage 
our attention. The head is captain, but the heart is lieutenant, 
and we take the joint as well as the separate orders of both. 
Those, if any, who reason from reason only, will find it hard to 
abide by some of their conclusions, for the logic of dry thought 
is often at variance with the logic of existence. To a world 
without ice it could be proved that water never freezes ; to a 
world without fire, conflagration would be nonsense; and in 
this world, if there were no snakes, fleas and mosquitoes, no- 
body could be convinced that there would ever be any. We 
know that our reason is under limitations, and we know, too, 
that we need emotion for correct action, then why not also for 
correct thought? We are not simple but compound. In men- 
tal melody, although the air is sung by the intellect, the accom- 
paniment is played by the emotions. True, they often leave the 



180 A MEMORIAL OF 

instrument, take up the air, and with their seductive voices 
sweeten but poison the music. Nevertheless, though we' must 
guard against their allurements, we cannot dispense with their 
skill any more than with their force. Their office is not only to 
propel, but to assist, often, in guiding and conducting us. 

Devotion to truth involves no absolute interdict on the exer- 
cise of the imagination, which has the double function of 
realizing to consciousness that which is, and inventing that 
which is not. In the former capacity it is a necessary and most 
important instrument of truth ; it the latter, unless closely 
watched, it is a prolific source of error, being prone not only 
to multiply its creations, but to utter its counterfeit coin as real 
money. Without close self-scrutiny there is no telling how much 
of our supposed knowledge is only imaginary. The man, 
especially the young man, who thinks he knows a great deal, 
is apt to have an empty knowledge box, or one filled mainly 
with fabrications. A cheap mode of accumulating- knowledge 
is to make it, and not be at the trouble of acquiring it. 

To true thinking habitual accuracy is necessary. Close, care- 
ful thoughts are good for packing and keeping, but those which 
are loose, vague and spongy are the reverse. Precision in 
expressing thought, whether in speaking or writing, cultivates 
accuracy of thought itself. Truth of thought and truth of 
expression are closely related, although thought and expression, 
at least in some departments of thinking, can never precisely 
coincide. When we fish for thoughts in another mind, we do 
not catch the fish themselves but pictures of them, and these 
pictures are commonly more or less imperfect both in drawing 
and in coloring. 

Education, sound, thorough, comprehensive, and widely dis- 
seminated, is favorable to truth in two ways: it qualifies the 
better for judging of truth, that is, for discriminating it from 
sham, imitation and falsehood, and it multiplies the seekers after 
it. Of course, the more the seekers, the more they are likely to 
find. In some respects, knowledge is like money : the more we 
have the more we want, and the more we get the easier it is to 
get more. And, for my part, I like an "appetite that grows by 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 181 

what it feeds on." With repletion enjoyment ceases, for when 
we can have no want we can have no gratification. It is not 
pursuit alone, nor possession alone, but both together, from 
which felicity is derived. We must want something and have 
something — have something and want something. We must 
ever cry, either for more of the same, or for some of the differ- 
ent; and if the same be good and inexhaustible, why not cry, 
more ! more ! more ! through all time and through eternity ? 
Knowledge is both good and inexhaustible ; so, too, are love 
and other forms of pure and elevated emotion. And they are, 
moreover, susceptible of infinite diffusion and distribution, 
with no impairment of their quantity or quality. The knowl- 
edge or emotion of one being does not limit that of another. 
What I know does not make your information the less, but 
tends, I hope, to increase it; and did your love reach to infinity, 
even as doth that of our Father in Heaven, not one pulsation 
of mine would be destroyed. Here is the field, here are the 
materials, for indefinite growth and progress, not of one, or of 
some, but of all. There may be unlimited appropriation by the 
individual, without hindering a like appropriation by every other. 
In these goods there is perfect community. As to them, there 
is one great Commune of the Universe. 

To find out truth requires labor. One obstacle to pro- 
tracted and persistent search is impatience to realize results, and 
despondency under the prospect of delay. Haste to enjoy is an 
error of time in the music of happiness. The time for happi- 
ness is "to-morrow, and to-morrow, till the last recorded sylla- 
ble." If it cannot be both present and future, by all means let 
it be future only. Future happiness is capital at interest ; besides 
the pleasure of fruition hereafter, it yields the pleasure of antici- 
pation from the date of expectancy. 

When pain is the price we have to pay for pleasure, (and 
generally it is) we should never willingly go on the credit sys- 
tem, but, if we can, pay in advance — pay up, receive the goods 
and consume them. When we make a debt, interest runs against 
us ; when we have a debt owing to us it runs in our favor. Of 
pleasure and pain there can be no complete separation in this 



182 A MEMORIAL OF 

world; but in so far as they are separable, the general condition 
most desirable is to have our pain behind us and our pleasure 
before us. Self-denial is as necessary to pleasure as to virtue; 
without it, there can be no elevated and durable pleasure, nor 
even the capacity for such. Wait to begin, and then "go slow." 
The movement of real happiness is not Yankee Doodle or Dixie, 
but Old Hundred. 

I have mentioned the agency of the emotions in producing 
thought, and hinted that they both lead and mislead. One of 
their modes of misleading is by exaggeration. Most of them, 
good or bad, magnify in order to move more effectually. In 
this part of their work they seem to operate chiefly through the 
imagination. Without attempting to exhaust the list, I will 
adduce some examples. Love magnifies all good qualities, and 
tries to excuse bad ones ; hate magnifies all bad ones, and 
ignores or denies the good ones ; hope magnifies favor in pros- 
pect; fear, danger, both present and prospective; courage, the 
insignificance of danger, or the glory of defying it; mercy, the 
duty of tenderness ; justice, the duty of severity ; remorse, guilt ; 
despair, calamity; revenge, injury; anger, provocation; envy, 
the success or prosperity of another; avarice, money; ambition, 
power, greatness and glory; pride magnifies self for the eyes 
of self; vanity, for the eyes of other people; humility magnifies 
self-littleness in comparison with an ideal standard; modesty, 
the same thing, with a vague reference to present company as 
a standard; despondency magnifies the gloom of the future in 
one particular direction ; melancholy, its gloom in all directions ; 
cheerfulness, its brightness in all directions; joy, the splendor 
of the present at a particular spot; grief, the darkness of the 
past at a particular spot, and consequent dreariness of the pres- 
ent and the future; benevolence, in general, the painful duty of 
self-sacrifice ; selfishness, in general, the pleasant duty of taking 
care of number one. Pity would magnify distress, and charity 
would magnify want and privation, if they could be exaggera- 
ted, but in our world this is hardly possible. Of course, there 
is no squaring our emotions by truth of thought without paring 
off all these exaggerations in each instance, and expelling them 
from the mind. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 183 

Breadth of emotion may coexist with any and all degrees of 
intensity, and, indeed, it includes them all, in so far as they are 
proper to be realized. Regard for the human race collectively, 
is not incompatible with devoted friendship for particular indi- 
viduals. Interest in the welfare of foreign nations., as at ihe 
present time for that of Ireland, is no hindrance to patriotism; 
we do not have to hate other countries in order to love our own. 
The more we love everybody, the stronger will be our affection 
for those who are nearest and dearest. Love requires no com- 
pression to make it intense ; on the contrary, it heats as it 
expands. I could accept as a definition of a great man this 
brief formula: A man of wide knowledge and sympathies. The 
actions of such a man are almost sure to be upon a scale, and of 
a kind and quality to correspond with both elements of this defi- 
nition. He who knows much and feels much certainly lives, 
himself; and he seldom lacks the power or the inclination to 
cause thought and feeling of the right sort in others — and 
thought and feeling are life. 

Of the two, it cannot be said that one is more important 
than the other; both are indispensable; but it is probable that 
an unworthy, vicious, or malignant emotion is a worse guest 
for the mind to entertain than a false thought. The heart, I 
should say, is ordinarily more wounded by moral error than the 
brain is by intellectual error. But it takes both these organs in 
a sound state to live a true life, whether of meditation or of 
ministration and conduct. Some forms of intellectual error 
may have a temporary influence for good, but the permanent 
• good realized in human affairs is the result of truth. All the 
great institutions of men are formed, guided and conducted, in 
the main, by correct thought and feeling. It is truth in church, 
in State, in society, and individual life, that runs the world. 

Meditate upon the exalted character and claims of truth ; let 
the intellect embrace it as both the end and the means of knowl- 
edge ; and let the affections attach themselves to it as an object 
of desire and devotion. 



TRUTH IN CONDUCT. 



An Address Delivered Before the Alumni Society, of the 

University of Georgia, July 20th, 1886, 

by Judge L. E. Bleckley. 



TRUTH IN CONDUCT. 

Gentlemen of the Alumni Society, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

You have heard the gentleman's introduction. Now, if you 
please, hear mine. For his I am not responsible. The only 
truth in it I heard was my name; if there was any more I tried 
not to hear it, and succeeded. No matter how well introduced 
by others, I always bring myself before my audience, if I have 
any. Very often I have none, and then I don't speak, except to 
myself. I take myself along all the time, and my habit is to 
talk about myself as freely as about other people, and quite as 
favorably; if any difference, more so. In short, I am an egotist. 
I consider it a great blessing to be myself, a blessing which I 
appreciate the more, the more I think of the great risk I must 
have run of being somebody else. Of the fifty-five millions of 
other people in the United States I might have been any one. 
Indeed the possibilities were much wider ; I might have been 
any one of the fifteen hundred millions that inhabit the earth. 
Nor does even this begin to exhaust the contingencies to which 
I was subject ; I might have been any one of the countless 
myriads that ever did or will live. I might, perchance, have 
been one of the unimaginable number of animals, or plants, or 
minerals — a grain of sand, or a mote in the atmosphere. I 
might have been any one of the units, any one of the atoms, of 
derivative existence, with my place at any point in the immensi- 
ties, my time at any moment of the eternities. On the other 
hand, I might not have been at all. 

No wonder that I feel self-complacent, after having drawn 
the capital prize in such an extensive lottery. And the reason 
of my complacency, no doubt, is that I take to myself the credit 
of selecting the lucky number — selecting it myself, with no 
suggestion from anybody, guided alone by my precocious sagacity. 
From Stekoah valley, at the base of the Blue Ridge, in the 
county of Rabun, the distance to where I now stand is eighty- 



188 A MEMORIAL OF 

five miles, but in making this short journey I have consumed 
fifty-nine years and seventeen days. Thus my coming to college 
has been at the late of somewhat less than one mile and a half 
per annum. Arrived at last, it would seem that I ought to feel 
late and expect to be marked tardy, and so I would were it not 
that I graduated on the way. I must have graduated, for this 
is my Alma Mater, and I am present now as one of the Alumni. 
Of course, traveling in my slow way, I could never have over- 
taken the honor, but it overtook me, or rather it met me in the 
road, and settled on my unworthy head ; fortunately without any 
examination of the inside. 

Stekoah, the name of my native valley, is a word in the 
Cherokee language, derived from steke, little, koah, big, and 
signifying little-big. On this occasion I feel Stekoah ; a feeling 
appropriate, I think, not only to college exercises, but to the 
general run of every day life. Steke by itself lets us down too 
low ; and koah sticks us up too high. It is singular that by 
going back to the aboriginal Cherokee we get, in one compound 
word, the most fit name which any language supplies for the 
right measure of self, that very troublesome quantity; a name 
suggesting that we are in fact, and ought to be in feeling, just 
as little as we are big, and just as big as we are little. If this 
does not measure us up correctly and settle our true magnitude, 
I call on the professor of mathematics to say what would. 

But it is time to enter seriously on the duty of dullness, that 
grave duty which every conscientious public speaker is expected 
willingly to perform, without the least mercy on his audience. 
My opportunity to be dull, or to be at all, in a place so unfamil- 
iar to me as a great seat of learning is due to the courtesy of the 
Alumni society of this university, which, last year, much to my 
surprise, elected me to honorary membership, and at the same 
time honored me still further by inviting me to deliver an address 
here and now. Deeply conscious of my unfitness in point of 
scholarship, at least, if not otherwise, for either of these distinc- 
tions, I nevertheless accepted them both. My rashness in so 
doing will astonish others as it astonished myself, but my dis- 
cretion was fatally wounded by a double-barrelled compliment 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 189 

which, though felt to be wholly undeserved, was on that very 
account the more highly appreciated. In the matter of plum- 
age and decoration I would rather be the recipient of mere 
grace and favor, than to receive like adornment in payment of 
any ornamental debt, however gay its colors. I always cherish 
my unmerited honors as the imaginary brightest imaginary 
feathers in my imaginary crest. 

I assume that truth is an acceptable subject, if not a familiar 
one, at a university. Taking the benefit of this assumption, I 
shall recite in your hearing a soliloquy on Truth in Conduct, 
improvised last week: 

As I stood alone 
Upon a mountain cone; 
Beneath me, in the wild, 
A fertile valley smiled, 
Beyond which north of west 
Rose high a mountain crest; 
And next, beyond, were set 
Some taller summits yet ; 
And farther off were seen 
The highest ribs of green; 
More distant rims of blue 
Extended still the view, 
Succeeding rim to rim, 
The last so faint and dim, 
So far away and fine, 
It seemed a fading line. 
On all this landscape lay 
The splendors of the day — 
A dream of sun and sky 
In the slumber of July. 

If it has no other merit, it is intensely rural, almost arca- 
dian, fresh from the woods and mountains, having, as it were, 
rolled down from the summit of the Screamerhorn. Moreover, it 
is dull enough, I know, for the severe taste of the most dense, 
dignified and diabolical mental organization that can possibly be 
in a civilized audience. 

Conduct is either positive or negative. Positive conduct 
consists of voluntary action by the bodv or its members. Nega- 



190 A MEMORIAL OF 

live conduct consists of voluntary restraint upon such action. 
The use of the tongue in speaking belongs to positive con- 
duct. Silence belongs to negative conduct. For convenience 
of handling, restraint upon action may be considered as a sort 
of action itself; and so conduct in general may be said to con- 
sist of voluntary action. 

The only source of conduct is thought and feeling; the only 
end of conduct is to cause thought or feeling. Thus, at either 
extremity of any series of conduct are thought and feeling. The 
chain may consist of a few links or a thousand, but in either 
case it begins and terminates in these elements. I speak, of 
course, of conduct which reaches its ultimate end_, and not of 
that which misses its mark or fails to arrive at its final desti- 
nation. Any voluntary act which is not intended to bear fruit, 
sometime and somewhere, in thought or in feeling, that is, in 
one of these forms of life, is absurd. No rational being ever 
performs such an act. But for its relation to thought and feel- 
ing, there would be no reason for doing or for not doing any- 
thing whatsoever. There would be neither duty nor interest in 
conduct, and universal idleness would be no less useful than 
universal employment. 

Feeling includes sensation and emotion. To continue or to 
modify thought or feeling is to cause it to be thus or so, and 
hence cause embraces both preservation and change, as well as 
production. There can be no thought or feeling save in the 
actor or some other being ; consequently, the end of all his 
conduct is to cause thought or feeling in himself or in some 
other being. 

In and of itself, all conduct is worthless ; it has value solely 
because of its derivation from, and its effect upon thought and 
feeling. Truth is related to conduct in all, or nearly all, the 
senses in which the term truth is used ; including correctness, 
accuracy, purity, sincerity, veracity, fidelity. Error is simply 
deviation from truth, whether by mistake, design or otherwise. 
The standard of conduct, as of everything else, is perfection ; 
in so far as it falls short of perfection, it is erroneous. For con- 
duct to be wholly true, that is, perfect, it must proceed from 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 191 

right thought and feeling, and cause right thought and feeling. 
Error in the source is not cancelled by truth in the result ; nor 
error in the result by truth in the source. It follows, that the 
means will not sanctify the end, nor the end the means. The 
one problem which conduct has to solve in every instance, is 
how to produce good with good ; or, at least, without the use 
of moral evil. It is permissible to employ mere physical evil as 
an instrument of work, but the only voluntary contact with 
moral evil which we can rightly have is to resist or repress it. 
We cannot incorporate it with our practical life and make it a 
part of our conduct. While the standard of conduct is perfec- 
tion, we can have no rational hope of reaching that standard ; 
yet, we should make it our constant aim, in order to approxi- 
mate it as nearly as we can. He who shrinks from attempting 
the impossible, is sure not to accomplish all the possible. Taking 
conduct in the aggregate, execution is certain to fall short of 
conception and design, and if these are not pitched higher than 
the attainable, attainment will not rise to its maximum. Lofty 
ideals are amongst the most influential forces in exalting the 
life, and perfection is the only completely definite ideal which 
the mind can construct. We can plan a life based on the exact 
truth, but cannot plan one based on any mere approximation to 
it. Our thoughts have no scale by which to measure degrees 
of approximation, and so, unless we go clear up to truth we do 
not know precisely how near to it we take our stand. 

Concerning conduct, nearly or quite all of it, three questions 
can be made; these are as to its morality, its prudence and its 
propriety; the first is a question of conscience, the second of 
judgment, and the third of taste. If conduct is perfectly sound 
in these three elements it is safe ; if unsound in the first, it is to 
be condemned ; if in the second it is to be regretted if not cen- 
sured ; if in the third it is to be criticised with more or less 
severity according to the degree of its impropriety. There are 
few acts of any member of society which may not affect others, 
as well as himself; and even those acts which affect only him- 
self have, (many of them,) an aspect of what may be termed 
self-duty. An individual has no right to treat himself just as 



192 A MEMORIAL OF 

he pleases. In a broad sense, therefore, morality includes a 
large part of both prudence and propriety. An imprudent act 
is generally, an improper act is frequently, wrong. 

The faculties most concerned in generating conduct, that is, 
the conscience, the judgment and the taste, cannot, I think, be 
too highly cultivated, provided they are all cultivated so as to 
secure a harmonious and well balanced development. Of course, 
the matter of supreme importance is to have the strictly moral 
element of conduct perfectly sound. Both prudence and pro- 
priety will admit of some omission or neglect, but the right and 
wrong of conduct is fundamental. In so far as moral culture 
may be necessary to purity of life, it is simply indispensable. 
But no doubt, there may be over-cultivation where the cultiva- 
tion of the moral faculty is too exclusive, and the result will be 
fanaticism. Narrow goodness is a dangerous force. Some of 
the best people in the world have done the most mischief. En- 
ergy in goodness is often attended with a corresponding energy 
in well-meant evil. A striking instance of this is furnished by 
the history of religious persecution. Not many centuries ago 
it seems to have been one of the most sacred duties of a good 
man to burn a better one than himself. The judgment is really 
the great balance-wheel of the mind, and for that we are 
dependent chiefly on the bounty and beneficence of nature. A 
very defective conscience may be brought up by supervision and 
cultivation to a sound standard of morality; but the most hope- 
less patient of the educative doctor is one of nature's weaklings. 
Yet, much may be done to strengthen and invigorate a feeble, 
or to expand a narrow, or clarify a cloudy understanding. So 
far as there is a remedy for the want of sense it lies in educa- 
tion. The skill of a real judicious teacher can almost make a 
mind out of a mere germ of raw material. Still, a manufac- 
tured mind is never a very safe one; and there is undoubtedly 
much waste of labor in attempting to put the last finish of edu- 
cation upon a poorly endowed intellect. If it had only fallen 
within Nature's plan to make us a race of intellectual giants, it 
would have simplified the problem of universal education no 
little. With respect to cultivating the taste, there is a strong 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 193 

suggestion of danger in it, if either the conscience or the under- 
standing is left behind. When taste becomes the leading faculty, 
the mind is wrecked, and very often the life with it. But there 
is a wide reach of benefit in its cultivation to a high degree, 
where the other faculties are kept up even with it, and still more 
where they are pushed on somewhat in advance of its attain- 
ments. It is certainly desirable to have correct taste, but beauty 
will not serve as the only or as the chief nourishment of the 
mind. The good and the true are more substantial and more 
necessary, though as a condiment, beauty is both delicious and 
wholesome. 

The widest element of morality with which conduct is con- 
cerned is justice. My study of justice, commenced in boyhood, 
and continued, with few interruptions, through the rest of life, 
has thoroughly impressed me with the supreme importance of 
this grand and noble virtue. Perhaps none of the virtues could 
be spared from the world, but I am sure this could not without 
leaving behind it a solitude or a social chaos. Some of the others 
are in the nature of moral luxuries, but this is an absolute neces- 
sary of social life. It is the hog and hominy, the bacon and 
beans, of morality, public and private. All conduct is bound 
not to do injustice ; but only a portion of it is bound to do jus- 
tice. Thus, all conduct of all men is bound not to rob any body, 
but the right of a creditor to have payment of a debt due him, 
is only against some of the conduct of his debtor. After some 
of that man's conduct has discharged the debt, then justice 
makes no further claim upon his conduct, in favor of his former 
creditor, except not to do him any injustice. No act whatever 
can do injustice rightfully to any being in the universe. It is 
absurd to suppose that there is, anywhere, a right to do the 
smallest particle of injustice. It follows that there is no conflict, 
and can be none, between justice and mercy. Any act intended 
as mercy, which conflicts with justice, is mere violence — violence 
either by mistake or design, and in either case it is error in con- 
duct. — There is no field, nor can there be any for the exercise 
of mercy, except in the forgiveness of debts or duties, or the 
remission of penalties for past offences. And no one can for- 



194 A MEMORIAL OF 

give or remit anything except those things which are due to 
himself. For you to forgive your debtor and discharge him, is 
mercy; it is no breach of justice but a gracious forbearance to 
exact its fulfillment; but for me to forgive your debtor and dis- 
charge him, unless I represent you for that purpose, is either a 
nulity, or an injustice — a nulity if you do not lose by it, an 
injustice if you do. 

Justice is the exact virtue, being mathematical in its nature. 
Mercy, pity, charity, gratitude, generosity, magnanimity, etc., 
are the liberal virtues. The liberal virtues flourish partly on 
voluntary concessions made by the exact virtue, but they have 
no right to extort a concession; they can only supplicate or per- 
suade. Thus, a man cannot give in charity, or from pity, 
generosity, hospitality, or magnanimity, the smallest part of 
what is necessary to enable him to satisfy the demands of jus- 
tice. It is noble to renounce what justice demands in our favor, 
but ignoble to indulge any of the liberal virtues by leaving 
undischarged its demands against us. If I am on the credit 
side of justice I can make any sacrifice of it that I will, but if on 
the debit side, I can make no sacrifice of it whatever. I may 
burn as an offering my own bull or lamb, but not that which 
rightfully belongs to another owner. To exact private justice 
has no special merit, except that of not doing injustice; on the 
other hand, to waive justice that we might exact is a fine exer- 
cise of virtue, but not finer than to render justice when we owe 
it. Private mercy is the renunciation of rights in our favor 
from a motive of kindness or compassion ; the satisfaction of 
private justice is yielding to rights against us from a sentiment 
of duty. There is nothing more exalted than duty and its per- 
formance. What we freely give cannot be better bestowed than 
what we pay in discharge of a perfect obligation. 

I have said that justice is mathematical in its nature. — One 
of its functions generally is to ascertain the terms and form an 
equation. The terms are rights on one side and duties on the 
other. Public authority duly exercised is the absolute arbiter 
of many, perhaps of most, rights ; but some have been placed by 
Nature, and others by the consent of mankind, beyond its reach. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 195 

There can be no right to anything but a good, and there is 
no good but virtuous happiness and virtuous means to such 
happiness. No man has a right to be miserable, even if he 
could desire to be so, further than as means to his virtuous 
felicity here or hereafter. And the same condition limits his 
right to have pain or misery inflicted upon others. No set of 
thoughts and feelings can owe pain to another set, and, there- 
fore, there can be no just claim upon anybody to undergo pain 
for its own sake, nor any right in anybody to inflict it for its 
own sake. A promise payable in pain specifically is void, no less 
than one payable in death or crime. Justice takes cognizance 
of pain as means but not as end, except as an end to be avoided. 
Any conduct having pain for its ultimate end, is erroneous. No 
man has a right to have his revenge or any of his malignant 
passions gratified. The suffering of the wicked for the conso- 
lation or delectation of the less wicked is abhorrent to justice; 
but in so far as punishment of the guilty is necessary to protect 
the innocent and the guilty alike in their rightful happiness and 
means of happiness, it is one of the chief concerns of justice. 
It is not the appropriate work of justice to equalize either the 
happiness or the misery of men. The moral universe is not one 
of equality between persons in their allowance of pleasure and 
pain. Neither God nor man has undertaken to equalize in this 
life, however it may be hereafter, the lot of men in respect either 
to happiness or the means of happiness. To some extent there 
is apparent equality, but the general aspect is one of inequality. 
The unequal elements seem very much more numerous, and 
most of them more important than the equal ones. No man can 
rationally complain that another is more happy or less wretched 
than himself. If there is no debt or duty between them, justice 
has no concern with the difference in their lot, though the lib- 
eral virtues may have the greatest concern with it. If, according 
to the proverb, misery loves company, we can excuse, but not 
justify it; even misery ought to commit no breach of benevo- 
lence, nor starve its own pain by feeding it on the pain of 
another. 



196 A MEMORIAL OF 

Though rights cannot exist in pain itself, they can exist in 
the ulterior results of pain ; and thus, though pain cannot be 
the final end of conduct, its results may be. This is the founda- 
tion of penal justice, the ground upon which the right to punish 
rests and is maintainable. A criminal is not punished on the 
theory that he owes it to justice, or to the State, or to any citizen, 
or to all the citizens, to suffer, but wholly and entirely to realize 
good somewhere through the consequences of his punishment. 
This good may be partly to him and partly to others, or to others 
only. So far as the accused himself is concerned, there is no 
direct effort to do justice to him, or to make him, in that instance, 
do justice ; the one and only care, as to him, is not to do him 
injustice. Relatively to the public at large, his condemnation 
and punishment are a debt due, if he is guilty, from the State 
or its ministers, not from him, he has no duty involved in the 
proceeding beyond the one violated in committing the crime, 
except that of submission ; and no right involved in it, except 
that of exemption from all manner and degrees of injustice. If 
he cannot be punished without injustice, he cannot be punished 
at all; he may be immolated through legal forms, but at the 
expense of a sacrifice of truth in conduct. Any implications in 
the structure of language, legal or ordinary, at variance with 
the theory here propounded, are the overflow of metaphor. 
When it is said that punishment is merited or deserved, the real 
meaning is, that it may be inflicted without injustice, and ought 
to be inflicted for the public good; and when it is said, the 
offender pays the penalty, it is meant that he undergoes the 
pain appointed as the means whereby the public good is realized. 
We can merit or deserve good only, not evil ; and pain is evil — 
always physical evil, sometimes moral evil, also. When it is 
only physical evil, it may be used as a means to a good end, 
provided no injustice is committed; when it is morally evil, its 
use is forbidden, whether as means or end. 

Merit has a positive relation to good alone; its relation to 
evil is only negative. In a punitive scheme, the problem, as I 
have suggested, is not to punish the offenders justly, but to pun- 
ish them without injustice. You may or may not, according to 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 197 

circumstances, visit your displeasure upon me without violating 
justice, but you cannot do it in fulfillment of any justice to me. 
If I do not deserve good, I am without merit ; I may have many 
other bad qualities, but no bad merit, and no good merit of any- 
thing bad. To spare the guilty, is merciful, but, in itself, is 
neither just nor unjust. It is not the exercise of the exact 
virtue at all, and relatively to the guilty alone, it is certainly 
not an infringement of that virtue. Inasmuch, though, as the 
punishment of one may result in good to others, these others can 
deserve to have punishment inflicted; and failure to inflict it, 
may be grossly unjust to them. But if they can be as well 
served without as with its infliction, there is no danger of doing 
injustice by not inflicting it, unless we include discipline for the 
reformation and amendment of the offender as a claim which 
he has upon justice, in which mere figurative use of the term, 
there may be injustice done to him by not making him suffer. 
In so far as to be hurt is for his own good, no doubt he should 
desire, even crave, to be hurt, and would have a sort of right 
to complain, if he were not hurt to that extent. But such a 
complaint would stand outside of literal justice, and could 
approach it only through the region of metaphor.* 

*NOTE ADDED AFTER THE DELIVERY OF THE ADDRESS. 

In all that I have said, I treat alone of human society and govern- 
ment, with no purpose to touch questions of Theology. Learned theolo- 
gians discern a conflict between justice and mercy, founded on a sup- 
posed necessary tie between guilt and punishment, which tie, they 
conceive, mere mercy could not sever without doing violence to justice. 
Dr. Thornwell's Collected Works, vol. 2, pp. 205-256, in Sermon on "The 
Necessity of the Atonement;" Dr. Albert Barnes on the Atonement, pp. 
30-48, 89-92, 169, 170, 193-195. Being, myself, no expert in Divine penal 
law, I cannot be sure that the considerations which reconcile justice and 
imiercy in human law, will or will not apply to the Divine law. But I 
am quite sure of the reconciliation as regards human law ; for it provides 
for mercy as well as for justice. They are both parts of the same sys- 
tem. When a Statute prescribes a penalty for any offence which can be 
pardoned, though it be silent in its letter on the subject of pardon, it 
virtually says the offender shall be punished so and so, unless he is par- 
doned. This condition adheres to every penal sentence, for every sen- 



198 A MEMORIAL OF 

Justice has no enemy more to be dreaded, or more to be 
denounced, than a mob of its friends. Mob violence, with the 
best intentions, is not only wicked but monstrous. It is virtue 
consenting to an unsanctified union with vice, in the delusive — 
the insane, hope that the offspring will be of pure, unmixed vir- 
tuous blood. As well might a saint cohabit with a fiend, 
expecting to rear a family of angels. He who believes that there 
can be any substitute for law in the infliction of penal justice, 
is criminally mistaken. The work of a true divinity cannot be 
wrought by a false god. Death at the hands of an indignant 
and infuriated mob is indeed death, but it is death not merely 
by lawless violence, but by high treason against the majesty of 
law — by the usurpation of its throne and the profane exercise 
of its most sacred prerogative. 

In penal or vindicatory justice, some delay is generally 
necessary, in order to afford cooling time in the community, and 
to allow full and fair opportunity to prepare for trial. Trial 
should be speedy but not precipitate; it must await the condi- 
tions requisite to impartial investigation, to calm deliberation, 
and to just decision. 

But a most important element in compensatory justice — jus- 
tice between man and man, is promptness, punctuality. An act 
due ought to be performed when due. To delay performance is 

tence is pronounced, not under a part of the law only, but under the 
whole of it; and the whole includes the law of pardon as well as the 
law of punishment. Perhaps this is not a principle of Divine law, though 
it looks like it might be. If God has been the same from all eternity, 
and if His law has likewise been the same, it would seem that if there 
is any provision now for pardon, there always has been, and that His 
whole law, taken together, never separated justice and mercy, but has 
united them and kept them united in one penal system from all eternity. 
That their union was effected through a scheme of atonement by the 
Redeemer would not put justice and mercy in conflict previously to the 
adoption of that scheme, for the scheme of atonement is eternal. Law, 
justice, mercy and scheme of atonement, are all of equal antiquity. 
Whether actual pardon in each particular case is of like antiquity, involves 
the great question of predestination. Why place mercy outside of the 
legal system and justice inside? There is nothing analogous to such a 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 199 

unjust — always vexatious, often injurious, sometimes ruinous. 
Moreover, as a general rule, the consequences are not confined 
to the first victim ; they extend through him to another, and then 
to another, and so on indefinitely, the ability to keep engage- 
ments being dependent throughout the whole series upon the 
fidelity of the first promissor. Of course this evil is felt most 
in pecuniary undertakings ; and it is a great evil. To the 
reproach of our laws, they apply no adequate corrective. Not 
only do they tolerate delay, but they rather encourage, almost 
invite it. Were men legally compellable to pay at maturity, 
they would be far more cautious in incurring liabilities, and 
much better off in consequence. Too much debt nearly always 
beclouds the business prosperity of the common people and 
threatens them with ruin. There ought to be no promise to do 
anything at a particular time without a serious intention of doing 
it then. Due bills and notes payable one day after date, are 
demoralizing, and ought neither to be offered or accepted in 
business intercourse. The rule for money as well as for every- 
thing else should be truth. You cannot deal with truth loosely 
and carelessly, even in small things, without weakening its 
authority and influence over the mind and the life in larger 
things. To the honor of the humble laborer, the man that has 



separation in human law. For mercy to be operative at all, it must 
work on the inside of the law, not on the outside. So far as my knowl- 
edge of Divine law extends, were that law duplicated as nearly as possi- 
ble by human law, the latter would, I think, be considered by any sound 
lawyer as a system of rewards and punishments, with the reward and 
the avoiding of punishment dependent, in every instance, upon condi- 
tional pardon, granted according to law, not contrary to law. But I must 
not be understood as attempting to teach anything concerning Divine 
penal law. Touching it I am a learner, not a teacher. 

As between man and man, the obligatory part of justice is to render 
justice, not to exact it. Though the debtor is obliged to pay, the creditor 
is not obliged to require payment, but may remit the debt. Whether, 
without the atonement, this or anything like it might hold between man 
and his Creator, I know not. That it holds, with the atonement, seems 
strongly indicated by our being taught to pray for the forgiveness of our 
debts "as we forgive our debtors." L. E. B. 



200 A MEMORIAL OF 

no capital and can get no credit except that based upon his hon- 
est toil, be it said, that he is quite as prompt to do his work at 
the time nominated in the bond, as is the average pecuniary 
debtor to pay his debt at maturity. And I would suggest that 
a most excellent remedy for the bad habits of labor, would be 
to amend the habits of capital, by way of good example. It is 
less the duty of the humbler than of the superior classes, to take 
the lead in such a fine virtue as punctuality. Merchants and 
bankers do approximate very closely the full measure of this 
virtue, and the good accomplished by them in founding and 
upholding commercial promptness is great indeed, but, thus far, 
it has been confined chiefly to their own circles. The laws of 
the land ought to advance to their standard, for the community 
at large, and stimulate the willing by precept, the unwilling by 
coercion. A British writer on Civilization says : "The tribu- 
nals of justice constitute the conscience of the State, and ques- 
tions of conscience are referred to the former, as, in case of an 
individual, all moral questions are referred to his conscience." 
The conscience of Georgia is pure ; none more so, whether public 
or private, in the whole world ; but, alas, how slow it is ! And 
this is not the fault of the conscience, but of the conscience 
maker, that is, the State. 

Time is of the essence of all compensatory justice, and a 
slow conscience does injustice, whether it intends to do it or not. 

The prompt payment of debts would go far to prevent cer- 
tain feelings of hostility between debtor and creditor, which are 
much to be deprecated. Before a debt falls due, the parties 
may be friends, may even have the affection of brothers. But 
maturity past, and the debt unpaid, the creditor smells fraud, 
and the debtor oppression, and they keep on smelling these disa- 
greeable odors till the matter is settled, and sometimes much 
longer. The debtor, especially, becomes embittered and is 
inclined to remain bitter for life. We can forgive our debtors, 
but who has learned to forgive his creditors? It is wonderful 
that the burden of paying anything is so onerous to our nature. 
Even to pay a visit is often so intolerable that it seems almost 
like martyrdom. And it may be set down as a universal rule, 
that the longer we owe, the more reluctant we are to pay. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 201 

Love furnishes an oft-repeated instance of punctuality, which 
I much admire. Rarely, indeed, does either of the parties to a 
marriage engagement fail to come to time. They take conspicu- 
ous and commendable pleasure in performing the promise to the 
very day — to the very hour and minute. This, I am sure, is 
because there is a woman in the case. Were men to become 
engaged, the marriage would be put off; then one party come 
and the other be absent; then the other come and the one be 
absent; then both be absent; and there would be no wedding at 
all, but in place of it two suits, one by, and one against each 
party, for breach of promise; and finally both suits would drop, 
because neither party was ever ready, nor ever would or could 
be ready, for trial. Woman has no disposition to procrastinate. 
She wants everything done and over with, so as to have every- 
thing else over and done with as soon as possible. She seldom 
thinks of violating a promise, in point of time or otherwise, 
except the promise of obedience, which she violates equally and 
invariably both when she thinks of it and when she don't. She 
can't obey, and won't, and won't try. Who can blame her ? 
She is obliged to have a husband, and can't get any without the 
consent of man, and man won't let her have any without extort- 
ing this unreasonable promise. According to much good 
authority in moral science, extorted promises are not binding 
on the male conscience ; then, why should they be on the female ? 
Hurrah for woman! Our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters 
are the sort of people I like. 

Some minds are so constituted that they neither feel willing 
to be entirely just, nor authorized to be entirely unjust. Their 
habitual inclination is to split the difference. And finding that 
the difference is not a surface but a line, and therefore cannot 
be split, they are always in: — 

TROUBLE. 

A very weighty reason 

Why many heads are bent, 
And many hearts unhappy, 

That ought to be content, 
Is, that only good and evil 

Have unto them been sent. 



202 A MEMORIAL OF 

Not satisfied with either, 

They wish and wish they had 
A middle sort of something, 

A neither good nor bad: 
That such a thing is wanting 

Has made them very sad. 

To serve both God and mammon 

Would come within their plan, 
If they thought that serving either 

Was the proper work of man; 
They would do what they cannot do, 

But nothing that they can. 

No form of petty but cruel injustice, is more common than 
injustice by superficial public opinion to public servants. Office- 
holders are abused, traduced and tortured in a manner not only 
scandalous but shameful. Except in the corrupt atmosphere of 
great cities, it is rare indeed that an officer does not do his 
duty; in most cases, he does much more than his duty. He is 
not only the servant of his constituents, but their devoted slave. 
Not infrequently he ruins his private fortune in order to do 
them generous favors, which he grants willingly, and which 
they return not seldom by ungrateful criticism of his motives. 
It has come to be thought that as soon as a man gets an office, 
all he does from thenceforth, is done with a view to hold on to 
it or to obtain another. Perhaps there is not an officer in the 
United States that can get credit at once with the people for 
acting in his most exalted deeds from any other motive. If he 
even goes to church with scrupulous regularity, they think it 
is less to worship God than to conciliate them. They demand 
courting, and yet are suspicious of their suitors, and despise 
them for their assiduity. There are two ways of compensa- 
ting for public service, salary or fees, and approbation; and of 
the two, approbation is immeasurably the more precious to every 
generous mind. Your mere money is nothing, compared to the 
tribute of your mind and heart. The great public exchequer of 
the State is not the treasury but the affections of the people. No 
one who has not served the public, has any true conception of 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 203 

the labor and sacrifice involved in holding public office. We 
are apt to think it a favor to one of our fellow-citizens to elect 
him to office, and so it is in a certain sense, for it is a great 
felicity to be useful to one's country; but the burdens of office, 
even of a small office, are far more considerable than is gener- 
ally supposed by the non-office holding portion of the commu- 
nity. To be a good justice of the peace, or even a good bailiff, 
requires much thought and anxiety, and great care and diligence. 

Did I attempt to exhaust the topic of justice, the result 
would simply be to exhaust both my audience and myself, with 
my subject still unexhausted. I stop, therefore, with the incom- 
plete and imperfect discussion to which you have listened. 

My next glance at truth in conduct, follows it into the sphere 
of individual independence. I need not say that I treat of prin- 
ciples only, with no application of them, even in thought, to 
particular persons, present or absent. 

Man was made for society, and for organized society, since 
there is no other worthy of the name. The solitary thinker is 
visionary, the solitary feeler is morbid, the solitary actor is 
eccentric. Association is consolidation of power in thought, in 
feeling and in conduct. It is the bond of fellowship, of sympa- 
thy and of cooperation. Separation clouds, cools, hardens and 
attenuates ; union lights, warms, softens and expands. A man 
may boast that he does his own thinking, but if he really does, 
he lives on a small stock of thought, and that of poor quality. 
This boast is like another, sometimes heard, of being self-made. 
A self-made man certainly needs mending. He needs it at once, 
before he is worn, before he is used; and more especially if he 
thinks he is well-made. The truth is, to make a man, it takes 
himself and all the help he can get. In some places in the 
country they invite the neighbors in to help raise houses, roll 
logs or shuck corn. This is a good precedent for the man- 
maker. Whenever an aspiring youth takes a fancy to make 
himself into a man, he ought to invite at least one whole county 
to assist at the ceremony. No one should set up as an independ- 
ent in man-making or anything else; nor should he ever dream 
of becoming an independent, or desire to become one. And to 



204 A MEMORIAL OF 

be an independent thinker is of all things the most undesirable 
to any person who wants to retain his reason. The only genu- 
ine specimens of the class are lunatics and madmen. To all 
appearance the most crazy thoughts of a maniac are completely 
and perfectly independent. Whether a person desires it or not, 
he will have, and ought to have, individuality in his thinking, 
and if his individuality is strong that will lead him into vagaries 
enough without any help from the spirit of independence. We 
had as well acknowledge that without other minds to lean upon, 
we could never know whether w r e were sane or insane. A man 
might be a stark fool all his life, and never find it out. Our 
own opinion of the soundness of our opinions only amounts to 
this — that we think them sound; and we always think them 
sound whether they are so or not, for if we did not think them 
sound we would not entertain them, and then they would not be 
our opinions. I defy any man to entertain a fixed opinion for 
a single moment without thinking it sound during the whole of 
that moment. As soon as he thinks it unsound he abandons it, 
or modifies it to suit his new view of the subject-matter. No 
difference where we go or what we do, our individuality will 
always cling to us. We need not be afraid of losing it, or of 
not having a proper field for its exercise. In conduct touching 
our individual concerns it may have full scope ; there we may 
let it revel all day and all night; give it any sway we please; 
make it not only the predominant, but if we are so inclined, the 
exclusive force in running our little machine ; but when we deal 
with social and public concerns we cannot thrust our bristling 
and rampant individuality into them, and with right claim for 
it the same unrestricted exercise as we chose to allow it at home. 
It is rational enough to apply the principle of association to pri- 
vate business, but irrational to apply the principle of individual 
independence to public business. The reason is, that we can get 
on with private business whether several be interested in it or 
only one, that is, with cooperation or without it ; whereas, in 
public business the only way to move at all is by cooperation, 
and without it the whole business would collapse. In private 
business we may have co-partners or may not, but in public 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 205 

business we are obliged to have them, and the}* cannot help it, 
nor can we. 

The spirit of truth in conduct requires that the nature of the 
conduct shall conform to the nature of the business. If a man 
wants to be as independent as a wood-sawyer let him saw wood. 
When he undertakes to saw at the state, he ought to saw with 
somebody — with majorities if he agrees with them, or with 
minorities if he agrees with them. If he can agree with nobody, 
and yet feels that he must saw, he may, I suppose, set up as an 
independent state-sawyer. He is apt to do some mischief at 
first, but his saw is likely soon to become dull and harmless. 

So far as my information extends, but two classes of inde- 
pendents have, up to this time, appeared in the politics of the 
world — the consistent and the inconsistent. The consistent 
independent is a political "hermit wrapped in the solitude of his 
own originality." The inconsistent independent is a monk who 
retires to the political wilderness not to insulate himself, but to 
attract others ; not to live alone like his consistent brother, but 
to build up or aid in building up a great monastic establishment. 
While anxious to increase his order, he is still more anxious 
that the whole order shall be independent of the pope, that is, 
of the organized people. And the bulls he dreads are the votes 
of citizens harmonious enough to vote in concert, and discreet 
enough to organize for concerted voting. It must be confessed 
that in some countries these bulls are very numerous ; they come 
out in large herds, and, sooner or later, they run down heresy, 
and gore it with their formidable horns. His inconsistency 
does not end with independent membership in the community 
to which he belongs, in other words, with being a member of 
an order, but not subject to its control. He adds the further 
inconsistency of being an organizer, though opposed to organi- 
zation. But he organizes without admitting it, even to himself, 
and so delicately, that the organic is the inorganic, and the inor- 
ganic the organic ; which leaves every member to vote as he 
pleases, but makes him please to vote exactly as all the rest do. 
This result is the same as that which fellows from open and 
avowed party organization, except that, generally, it elects 



206 A MEMORIAL OF 

nobody; and if it does elect for awhile it soon ceases to have 
that effect. This species of independentism may be denned as 
organized disorganization; and however it begins, its very prin- 
ciple is equal to a policy of insurance that it will end in organ- 
ized disorganized defeat. 

Party organization, frank, candid, compact and complete, is 
the nurse of the State. Party power is public authority in 
embryo — the rudimentary force, which, when fully developed 
through legal forms, presides in the executive chamber, deliber- 
ates in the halls of legislation, and dispenses justice from the 
bench. No method of translating the will of the people into 
law, and of registering the same in the statute book, has yet 
been devised or discovered by man, except party intervention. 
No country has liberty without party, and to expect in the pres- 
ent state of political science, to repudiate party and retain liberty, 
is like claiming the wages without doing the work, or demand- 
ing the goods without paying the price. Voters who mob the 
ballot box, instead of approaching it with respect for the known 
will of the party to which they belong, or ought to belong, and 
with a just recognition of the utility of premeditated concert in 
casting their suffrages, have too little of the spirit of harmony 
to combine for the defense of liberty or of any public blessing. 
To cooperate with party does not by any means require party 
services from all, but it requires reasonable loyalty to party 
platforms and to party candidates duly designated and presented 
for election. For good reasons a man may change his party, 
that is, separate from one and join another, but to have no party 
when important public measures are pending, and they are 
nearly always pending either for adoption or preservation, is 
like having no country. Truth in conduct touches all the real 
interests of life. A man can no more decline the duties of citi- 
zenship than he can decline those of the family, the neighbor 
or the friend. 

The evil of party is abuse of its functions. To reform 
abuses is at all times a worthy object, both of desire and exer- 
tion. But to purify a party by acting upon it from a position 
of independence from without instead of from a position of co- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 207 

operation within, is not less hopeless than to reform the world 
by retiring to a desert. The attempt is like trying to cultivate 
a crop by quitting the plow, climbing over the fences, and 
mounting upon a stump in the adjacent woods. 

Returning for a moment to conduct in general, I will observe 
that energy has much to do with the quality of work, as well as 
with its quantity. Languid and reluctant conduct is apt to be 
more or less infected with error. He who cannot think and 
feel in order to act, should act in order to think and feel. If 
you cannot catch truth at one end, seize it at the other, and the 
very exercise will aid you in finally getting possession of both 
ends. 



THE RIGHTS OF MIND. 



Oration by Hon. Logan E. Bleckley, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 

of Georgia, Delivered at the University of the South, 

Sewanee, Tenn., on Commencement Day, 1892. 



Reprinted from a Pamphlet Published by 
Order of the Board of Trustees. 



On the occasion of the delivery of this address the Board of Trustees 
of the University of the South conferred upon Judge Bleckley the degree 
of Doctor of Civil Law, and ordered the publication of the address in 
pamphlet form. 






THE RIGHTS OF MIND. 

Chancellor, Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees, Members of 
the Faculty, Students of the University, Ladies and Gen- 
tlemen : 

Dogmatic expressions, when they occur in this discourse, are 
to be taken invariably with this qualification, "to the best of the 
knowledge and belief of the speaker," — a knowledge which is 
very little and a belief which is very much. 

Mind plus Not-mind will embrace all being, primal and 
derivative. Whether mind is the conscious substance itself or 
only a permanent group of faculties inhering in that substance, 
it is, if not the whole of personality, that part of it for the 
sake of which all other things exist. Nothing is of any signifi- 
cance or value save in its relations to intelligence and feeling. 
Strike from the universe all things but mind, thought and emo- 
tion, and nothing would be missed. The office of all else is to 
minister, to serve as means. Objects of desire may be divided 
exhaustively into means and ends. The ultimate objects of all 
rational desire are thoughts and emotions (these and nothing 
else), to be realized now or hereafter in all minds, in some 
minds, or in one mind. They alone, in the last analysis, are 
the stuff and substance of all good. Other forms of good have 
worth only as means of producing, conserving and distributing 
these forms. To acquire, retain or modify thoughts and emo- 
tions, and to cause their acquisition, retention or modification 
by others, is the real end of all voluntary activity. The indus- 
tries of the world are occupied with this one ultimate purpose. 
The farmer, the mechanic, the merchant, the physician, the artist, 
the poet, the professor, the philosopher, the divine, the soldier, 
the statesman, the jurist, and the numerous other toilers with 
brain and brawn, even the butcher and cook — are engaged in 
different departments of the same common business, the outcome 
of which is contribution, directly or indirectly, to thought and 



212 A MEMORIAL OF 

emotion. In this result is found the unifying principle of all 
their exertions, however diverse and dissimilar their vocations. 
The common end for which all strive may be pursued more or 
less consciously, or even quite unconsciously; it may lie at any 
degree of remoteness from any present means used for its 
attainment; but it is always the same, and consists of some 
state, definite or indefinite, possible or imaginary, foreseen or 
unforeseen, of thought and emotion. Everything else belongs to 
the category of means. Indeed, a large proportion of thoughts 
and emotions also belong to that category; they are not prized 
so much for what they are in themselves as for their efficiency 
in producing other and more desiiable thoughts and emotions, or 
in preventing such as are undesirable. 

This brief but comprehensive survey prepares us for the 
widest possible classification of the rights of mind, a classification 
which embraces all rights whatsoever. Everything which can be 
possessed is worthless save in so far as it constitutes or contrib- 
utes to mental phenomena. These phenomena are the only 
constituents of real good in its final form. Well might the poet 
exclaim, 

"My mind to me a kingdom is !" 

Thought is concerned with truth and falsehood. Emotion is 
concerned with pleasure and pain. The ideal completeness of 
intellectual good is to have no false or erroneous thoughts what- 
soever, and always to have true thoughts co-extensive with all 
truth and conforming to it in every detail and particular ; in other 
words, to know everything accurately and exactly, and to retain 
that knowledge forever. The ideal completeness of emotional 
good is to be exempt from pain, and have a constant and ceaseless 
flow of virtuous pleasure in its maximum degree of variety and 
intensity. Of course, such completeness is unrealized and unreali- 
zable by any mind except that of Divinity. Certainly, in this 
present life, no human mind has any right to the maximum either 
of knowledge or of happiness. Our rights, though extensive, are 
confined within impassable limits, some of these limits being 
lodged in ourselves, others in our physical environment, and oth- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 213 

ers in the laws, divine and human, to which we are subject. 
Speaking generally, our rights both intellectual and emotional are 
limited by capacity and opportunity, and our emotional rights, 
especially, are still further limited by our duties. All pleasure 
incompatible with duty is prohibited, and all pain which duty 
requires us to undergo is to be accepted and endured. Not even 
death can be declined when duty calls for the sacrifice. 

I think it may be said that every mind has a right to all the 
true thoughts appropriate to its condition and wants, which it can 
innocently get, and to all virtuous and pleasant emotions which 
it can innocently have. No doubt it has also a right to some aid 
from the public, or from individuals, perhaps from both, to 
develop and expand its powers, so that its native capacity for 
acquiring knowledge and using it may be enlarged, and the range 
of its emotional experiences broadened and elevated. That every 
one, as matter of right, may demand, at the proper time, some- 
where and of somebody, instruction and guidance in the essentials 
of knowledge and right feeling, as well as of right conduct, seems 
manifest. 

This is only to affirm the right of education, intellectual and 
moral — a right which modern opinion is beginning to recognize 
as universal. To me, the interest which we have in thinking and 
feeling correctly is so incomparably paramount to any interest 
which we can have in goods and chattels, lands and tenements, 
except as material wealth may contribute to the increase, eleva- 
tion and dissemination of thought and emotion, that I am quite 
unable to comprehend why the right of education should be more 
obscure or uncertain than the rights of property. Were it 
practicable, every individual man and woman should receive all 
the education which would be beneficial; that is, all that would 
result in enlarging his or her capacity for sound thought and 
virtuous emotion, and for producing these in other minds. That 
under present conditions this is impracticable, I am aware. Only 
because it is impracticable does the right of education in our age 
and generation fall short of the ample measure which I have 
just indicated. The right stands secure on principle, and may in 
the remote future be realized to its full extent in practice. 



214 A MEMORIAL OF 

Rights commonly called the rights of person and property, 
most of which appertain to material means of bringing to pass 
desirable thoughts and emotions, and of preventing those which 
are hurtful or undesirable, are under the guardianship of the 
laws of the land. Concerning the particulars of this immense 
mass of rights there is no need that I should speak to this audi- 
ence. I desire to concentrate your attention on a class of rights 
which lie so close to thought and emotion, and to the processes 
on which the good or bad quality of thought and emotion 
depends, that human laws decline to care for them; but they are 
none the less rights according to the moral code and the law of 
right reason. Some of these rights have regard to the intellect, 
some to the emotions, and some to both. Merely as specimens or 
examples, three or four will now be pointed out and briefly dis- 
cussed. One of chief importance is the right against intellectual 
fraud, or fraud upon the reason. This is the most abused, the 
worst treated, of all rights. It may be violated by self-deception 
or by the deceptive practices of others. A mind is always entitled 
to fair treatment, both' at home and abroad, but many minds, 
perhaps most of them, are assailed and often duped and imposed 
upon by fraud from without and fraud from within. One of the 
most difficult undertakings is to find and take and keep the right 
attitude towards our own reason and intelligence. The will con- 
stantly endeavors to dictate to the understanding and substitute 
desire for evidence. We resolve to believe something and then 
proceed to believe it, or to disbelieve something and then proceed 
to reject it. That this is fraud of a certain kind there can be no 
doubt. When we become conscious of it, detect ourselves in the 
act, and consider it with sober deliberation, it presents both to 
our intelligence and our conscience, if they are in a sound state, 
all the characteristics of a trick. Another vice which is equally 
pernicious and reprehensible is that of deciding on inadequate 
information. We reason from insufficient premises, and draw 
conclusions when we know or ought to know that one or both 
of the premises are incomplete. Suspense is painful, and we are 
prone to end it by forcing or fabricating a definite yea or nay. 
This is wrong. We ought to suffer the pangs of doubt so long as 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 215 

the truth in question is really doubtful, and persevere in inquiry if 
further inquiry is likely to be fruitful. What cannot be rightly 
decided cannot be decided at all. It is better to protract delibera- 
tion indefinitely than to decide without being convinced. This does 
not forbid adopting what might be termed a working hypothesis, 
and applying it diligently and energetically in the practical affairs 
of life, such as government, politics and daily business. As to 
these affairs we must act whether we are ready or not, and 
whether we have fully made up our minds or not ; and in order to 
act up to the demands of our wants and the measures of our 
duties, we must proceed as if many questions were decided for 
all time which to our own minds, if we are quite candid with our- 
selves, are still open. In selecting a working theory we are well 
justified in reposing on authority in which we can confide until 
we are able, if at all, to reach full conviction through authority 
alone, or through it and other forms of evidence. But in the 
nature of things, nothing can obliterate the difference between 
seeing for ourselves and crediting the existence of things visible 
to the eyes of others but not to our own. And we should be care- 
ful not to persuade ourselves, or be persuaded, that we in fact 
see what we do not. To be faithful to our own ignorance 
involves no denial or impeachment of knowledge in general, or 
of the knowledge which any one else possesses or thinks he 
possesses. The aggregate wisdom of the universe is neither 
more nor less by reason of the faithful adherence of each par- 
ticular mind to its own true state and condition. It is no less 
fraudulent to deceive ourselves by exaggerating our knowledge 
than by exaggerating our ignorance. That we know what we 
do not know, or do not know what we know, is alike contradic- 
tory and false. Why should a man be a pretender, either to 
himself or others? Why should he be an intellectual hypocrite 
or impostor? Surely he has the right to be true to himself, and 
if the right exists it is coupled with a corresponding duty. There 
is no higher duty upon any intellect than to be candid and con- 
scientious with itself. Indeed, this is the radical intellectual 
virtue. Without it there is no security for truth, or for the dis- 
semination of truth. A mind which is habituallv uncandid with 



216 A MEMORIAL OF 

itself will not scruple to be uncandid with other minds. And 
the enormity of defrauding other minds, whether by false infor- 
mation or false logic, cannot be overestimated. Whether a lie 
is put by open statement into premises, or infused by sophistry 
or fallacy into the conclusion, makes no difference. If it 
deceives and misleads it does the work of a lie, and ought to 
incur the odium of falsehood. The amount of mischief done to 
truth by false and sophistical argument is beyond computation. 
There is not time to refer to the various devices and instrumen- 
talities used to produce conviction when it is not due. One of 
the most common is urging the irrelevant. If the irrelevant 
could be eliminated from controversy the chances of arriving at 
truth would be vastly increased. Of course, neither this form 
of intellectual fraud nor any other is always wilful or corrupt. 
Much of it proceeds from ignorance, much from negligence or 
carelessness, and much from the mere ardor of advocacy and 
the passion for victory. But none of it is either harmless or 
justifiable. Indeed, the well-meant is often the most hurtful. 

It is not by any means the whole of intellectual candor for 
the mind to take the negative or non-committal attitude in those 
cases in which that attitude is proper. The positive attitude in 
other cases, especially respecting matters of grave concern, is 
equally if not more vital. We should be as resolute to accept 
truth on adequate evidence and to prevent tricks of the will 
from delaying or deluding us, as we are to reject improbable 
truth when the evidence to establish it is insufficient. We 
should be as faithful to our knowledge as to our ignorance, and 
as ready to end doubt as to prolong it. Doubt for the sake of 
doubt is like business based on bankruptcy and conducted to ren- 
der insolvency perpetual. What can be rightly decided should 
be decided promptly. It is needless to protract deliberation 
after we are fully persuaded, and a mere working hypothesis is 
quite superfluous when truth itself is within the range of our 
own vision. Those truths which by their very nature admit of 
no conclusive attestation to the reason, but are propounded more 
to the faith than to the logical faculty are to be clearly discerned 
only by the eye of faith. This peculiar characteristic and all its 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 217 

consequences should be frankly recognized and fairly dealt with 
in weighing the claims of those truths upon acceptance and 
belief. It is thought and taught by many, by very many, of the 
ablest minds in the world, minds qualified by study and obser- 
vation to form an opinion as experts and bear witness accord- 
ingly, that a widely spread and most disastrous failure in intel- 
lectual candor occurs respecting these truths. Assuming the 
fact to be established, it is one of the most appalling facts in the 
history of mind, the real import of it being that minds are 
engaged in defrauding themselves or trying to defraud them- 
selves, out of the blessing of eternal life; that is, out of those 
thoughts and emotions which would be vouchsafed to them in 
heaven if they were to abandon self-deception and permit them- 
selves to be saved. This is a thing so dreadful that it ought to 
be seriously pondered by every one who can make an applica- 
tion of it to his own case. Impelled to say this by that candor 
which I am commending, I say it in a spirit of deepest rever- 
ence and solemnity. 

The next right of mind which I will mention is not an intel- 
lectual but an emotional right. It is the right against violence 
to the emotions. This, also, is a right of first rate importance. 
It is much disregarded and too often wilfully violated. There 
are some cultivated persons who would not wantonly strike 
another man's horse or dog, but who would not hesitate on the 
slightest provocation, or at times even without provocation, to 
inflict a painful blow directly upon the feelings of the man him- 
self. Scrupulous forbearance to injure property and a hasty 
forwardness to wound feelings are sometimes marked traits of 
the same individual. No doubt such inconsistency would be less 
frequent if it were generally understood that feelings are 
more truly and intrinsically property than any of those external 
possessions to which the name property is usually applied. If 
emotions are not sacred, there is no reason why inanimate 
things which minister to them should be regarded as sacred. 
Surely the less excellent should not be exalted above the more 
excellent. If any of our belongings ought to escape injury, 
our feelings ought. What does a man care for aggressions on 



218 A MEMORIAL OF 

the outside save as they trouble or torture the inside? Many 
and various are the ways of hurting or doing violence to the 
feelings. Mere neglect when attention is due causes pain. Rude- 
ness, ridicule, captious criticism, petty vexation by teasing, and 
a hundred others, are the weapons of insult, mortification and 
annoyance. Why it should afford pleasure to any civilized being 
to disturb or distress another is a marvel and a mystery. 

An emotional right of a kindred though somewhat different 
description will now be referred to. It may be called the 
"aesthetic right," or the right against ugliness. Perhaps no one 
can claim the right to have his taste or sense of beauty gratified 
beyond the limit which he fixes for himself by providing appro- 
priate means for such gratification. It is not one man's duty to 
put himself out of the way to display before the eyes of another 
a beautiful object, such as a painting, a statue or a flower; but 
the negative right of aesthetic repose undoubtedly exists. While 
I am not bound, unless I feel so inclined, to exhibit my beautiful 
things, if I happen to have any, to my neighbor, I am bound 
not to harass, shock, distress or disgust him by forcing upon 
his attention needlessly anything ugly or uncomely. If I could 
help it, I ought not to be ugly myself in his presence; and cer- 
tainly my general conduct and demeanor before him ought to 
be as handsome and becoming as possible. Involuntary ugli- 
ness can be excused, but voluntary ugliness is a species of awk- 
ward wickedness. 

The last right which I will glance at is one of a mixed nature. 
It exists for the behoof both of the intellect and the emotions. It 
has relation to that something in the mind which corresponds to 
the muscular system in the body ; a sort of mental muscular system 
which is sensitive throughout and which is capable of fatigue, 
and finally of exhaustion. The right for its protection is the 
right to brevity, or the right against being bored. If there is 
anything on earth more terrible than an army with banners, it 
is the man (of course there is no such woman) who never 
knows when to hush. Fortunately such men are rare. But 
were they very numerous, the choice between living with them 
and joining the anarchists would not be difficult to make. They 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 219 

always have good intentions ; they sincerely desire to entertain 
or instruct. They want to make you a present of something — 
to give you a book after reciting all of its contents, or an 
insurance policy after expounding the plan, or a machine 
which they have invented, or a medicine which they dis- 
covered and which cures all manner of diseases, or to com- 
municate some secret which will make your fortune, or show 
you how to save the country, or how to transform the world 
into an earthly paradise. Indeed, they bore from motives of 
pure benevolence. This it is which makes it so hard to deal with 
them. It is impossible not to appreciate their goodness. Who 
is not reluctant to offend or to mortify them? What resource 
have their auditors? None save to endure as you have done 
throughout the time occupied by me in the delivery of this dry 
and prosy address. With thanks, profound thanks, for your 
patience and attention, I now release you. Farewell. 



THE JUDGE AS A FACTOR IN TRIALS OF FACT. 



A Paper by Hon. Logan E. Bleckley, Read Before the 

Fourteenth Annual Session of the Georgia Bar Association, 

Warm) Springs, Georgia, July 1st, 1897. 



Reprinted from Annual Report. 



THE JUDGE AS A FACTOR IN TRIALS OF FACT. 

The law undertakes to do two things — to dictate conduct 
and to render this dictation effectual. It prescribes one set of 
rules to be observed, and another set for use in enforcing their 
observance. Thus law, when not self-executing, is to be exe- 
cuted according to law. In this respect it may be regarded as 
a vast machine, overspreading and enveloping society, and run- 
ning in part by automatic action, and in part by subordinate and 
accessory machinery, designed for this special purpose and no 
other. Some of this subordinate machinery is executive, and 
some of it is judicial. The judicial portion of it consists of the 
law of procedure. Procedure is the legal machinery with which 
courts do their work, and their work is to ascertain deviations 
from the law of conduct and to apply the proper corrective. The 
law of conduct, otherwise called the substantive law, though in 
some respects imperfect, is up with the times, and is instinct 
with vitality and the modern spirit. But the law of procedure, 
otherwise called the adjective law, fits neither the past nor the 
present. Past systems have been uprooted, without replacing 
them with anything adequate to the demands of our own times. 
Fragments from these systems have been retained which are 
worse than useless, and other fragments of the highest value 
and adapted or adaptable to all ages have been dropped out and 
abandoned. One of the precious fragments thus treated in 
Georgia is the active cooperation of the trial judge with the jury 
in determining questions of fact. Within the last half of the 
present century we have had in this State no genuine trial by 
-jury, either in civil or criminal cases, but only a lifeless and 
formal semblance of such trials. The presiding judge has been 
condemned by statute to profound and perpetual silence (in his 
intercourse with the jury) as to what is proved or not proved 
by the evidence, or as to the guilt of the accused. No matter 
how clear and decided and how well-grounded his opinion may 



224 A MEMORIAL OF 

be, nor how much the jury may need his opinion for their proper 
guidance, he dare not express or even intimate it in their hearing. 
Were they to ask for it, he would be bound to withhold it. No 
such trial by jury as this was ever known in England, nor was 
it known in Georgia prior to the act of 1850. Nor is it theoreti- 
cally any more than historically, true trial by jury. The maxim 
that the judge responds to the law and the jury to the fact, does 
not mean, and never did mean, that the jury are not to have the 
aid of the judge as a trial expert in forming their opinion upon 
the facts when he thinks they need his assistance and he is able 
and willing to afford it. In many cases the judge should not 
only express his opinion on the facts, but carefully exhibit and 
expound the reasons and grounds of it, arguing zealously for its 
adoption. In this way he can prevent obvious justice from being 
sacrificed before his eyes by the sophistry of ingenious counsel. 
Nothing but such intervention from the bench can balance the 
unequal skill and shrewdness of opposing lawyers, or rescue the 
jury from the perplexity and confusion into which their minds 
are often thrown by listening to very strong or very weak argu- 
ments on both sides. No judicial function is more imporant 
than that of saving the jury from being misled. So long as the 
bar is represented before the jury in argument, it is necessary 
to the sound and certain administration of justice that the opin- 
ion of the bench should occasionally, if not frequently, follow as 
a supplement. Doubtless, in a majority of close and difficult 
cases, perhaps in every such case, the jury would like to know 
what the judge thinks and what are his reasons for so thinking; 
and there is little doubt that to gratify the jury in this respect 
would be generally useful and rarely, if ever, hurtful to the 
right side of the case. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any 
reason whatever for muzzling the trial judges, as we have done 
in Georgia, save to give the wrong side an equal chance of win- 
ning the verdict with the right side. Turn the lawyers loose 
and hold the judge, is the policy on which this singular rule of 
procedure seems to be grounded. 

Where the trial judges are able, upright and impartial, as 
they commonly have been and still are, here as well as in Eng- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 225 

land, there is but one decisive reason why trial by jury is better 
than trial by the judge alone if there were judges enough to 
perform with due care all the requisite labor. That reason is, 
that much, sometimes all of the evidence is oral, and on the 
credibility of witnesses, which is of great consequence to the 
ascertainment of truth, a judge would frequently, perhaps gener- 
ally, be at a loss to decide promptly and correctly, whereas, 
jurors, by reason of their numbers and local acquaintance, are 
usually free from this embarrassment, or much less subject to 
it. In cases of conflicting testimony, they know better than a 
judge would ordinarily know whom to credit and whom to dis- 
trust. This renders trial by jury a needful and permanent institu- 
tion in a wise and safe judicial system, for the time will never 
come when oral evidence (taken by commission or in open 
court) will or can be dispensed with. Could all cases be tried on 
written documents of admitted genuineness, trial by jury would 
be an absurdity. No law, so far as I know, has ever yet thought 
of referring to a jury the construction of a writing, that is, the 
ascertainment of what the writing proves, when its meaning is 
so plainly expressed as to need no aid from parol evidence to 
elucidate it. Even the reticence imposed on the trial judges by 
the dumb act of 1850, rightly interpreted, does not hinder them 
from telling a jury that a promissory note proves the creation 
of a debt, or a grant from the State proves the conveyance of 
title to the grantee. It is only where all or a part of the evi- 
dence is oral that the rule of utter silence prevails. 

The mischief of the act of 1850 would have been intolerable 
in the way of consuming time in trials with nothing to try, if 
the courts had abided by the letter instead of following out the 
spirit of the act and treating the letter as a mere shell. By a 
benign construction in behalf of public time and expense the 
trial courts were left room for directing a verdict in civil cases 
whenever the evidence is without conflict and so decisive as to 
render any verdict other than the one directed a manifest non 
sequitur or logical impossibility. This disarmed the statute of 
its incidental, but not of its direct power to work mischief. It 
eased the public but left the parties, the right as well as the wrong 



226 A MEMORIAL OF 

one, without the joint action of court and jury in solving any 
real question of fact on which the aid of the court would, or 
might be, beneficial to the cause of justice. Where the voice of 
the judge is most needed and would be most useful to the meri 
torious litigant, he is forbidden to speak, save in terms of gener- 
ality, and with circumlocution and conditions and qualifications 
which as often add to the confusion of the jury as minister to 
their enlightenment. When the law has made of the judge a 
sort of prisoner in his own court, to hear him charge a jury in 
an intricate and doubtful case of complicated facts is almost 
painful, even to a disinterested bystander. No court can possi- 
bly have the influence it ought to have, either on the litigation 
before it or on the public mind, if the presiding judge is re- 
strained from saying frankly what he thinks of the business he 
is transacting, and thus doing all he can to bring its real merits 
into clear and open light. If the people want real courts for the 
trial of cases, civil and criminal, full and complete courts, with 
full and complete trial by jury, the mutilation inflicted on the trial 
judges by the act of 1850 must be healed and the principle of 
that act, as it stands to-day in the code, must be abandoned. This 
recommendation involves no addition to the power of the trial 
judge, but only the restoration of that which he possessed and 
might or might not exercise at his own discretion under the law 
as it always existed prior to the year 1850. He could give his 
opinion to the jury on disputed facts, but they were not bound 
by it. He could counsel and advise them, but not by way of 
legal or obligatory direction. He could lead and guide, but not 
drive them. This was trial by jury, and we ought to get trial 
by jury once more and then keep it. 

To guard against misapprehension, I ought to say, and do say, 
that in speaking disparagingly of our present legal procedure as 
a whole, I am not contrasting it with the past, but with what 
might be and ought to be for the future. I am comparing what 
we have with what we need in order to be abreast with the times 
in other departments of human activity and progress. In my 
opinion, we have made the double mistake of departing from the 
past in a few instances (one of which I have pointed out) in 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 227 

which we should have adhered to it, and of adhering to it in 
many instances in which we should have departed from it. I 
can give no better general notion of my mental attitude on the 
subject than by classing myself as a conservative-radical or a 
cautious reformer. The true measure of progress is that only 
which can be reconciled with order. This much I want, but am 
too timid to strive for more. Regular and orderly government 
is of such supreme importance that no price would compensate 
for the loss of it. 

As a further guard against misapprehension, I wish to add 
that imperfect as our procedure is, I do not consider the results 
legitimately attributable to it thus far as very calamitous or 
deplorable. I think both civil and criminal justice are fairly 
well administered in Georgia, save in a class of criminal cases 
which law cannot reach, and in another class which law is hin- 
dered from reaching by mob violence. Ordinary criminal cases, 
in so far as I have observed, are tried as promptly and with as 
much peril to the guilty as they have been at any time since the 
organization of the Supreme Court, which was in the early part 
of 1846, the year in which I was admitted to the bar. From 
that time up to the close of the civil war I never knew or heard 
of' but one white person being executed in this State without 
first having the conviction undergo revision by the Supreme 
Court. The excepted case was that of Radford J. Crockett, who 
was executed in Fulton county, on a plea of guilty, for the 
murder of Landrum. He embraced religion after the homicide, 
and before he could be tried, plead guilty as matter of con- 
science, and suffered death without troubling any court save to 
invoke its judgment upon his recorded confession of guilt. 

I cannot bring my mind to the conclusion which, according 
to the public press, so many other minds have reached, that 
"lynching," now unfortunately so prevalent, is attributable to 
bad law or bad administration. It seems to me that to account 
for it on such a theory is not only erroneous as matter of opin- 
ion, but pernicious as matter of policy. It suggests a cause for 
crime which is in the nature of an excuse for the criminal, an 
excuse which seems to palliate the guilt of law-breakers by faults 



228 A MEMORIAL OF 

in the law or in its administration. Of course, if the theory is 
sound, the policy of declaring it is equally sound, but those who 
advance it ought to be very sure of its correctness before per- 
sistently urging it. That the lynchers themselves find fault both 
with the law and the way it is administered admits of very 
little doubt. 

As I have seen a public announcement that this topic is to 
be a leading one for consideration and discussion by this Asso- 
ciation, and the topic itself .being of overwhelming importance 
at the present time, I will conclude this paper by reproducing 
the substance of a brief correspondence in relation to it. 

In the month of April last, a stranger, writing to me from 
a leading law school in one of the New England States, pro- 
pounded these three questions: 1. What, in general, do you con- 
sider to be the cause of lynching, and why does it increase from 
year to year? 2. What remedies would you suggest? 3. To 
what extent is the maladministration of criminal law responsible, 
and what changes in such administration would be likely to prove 
helpful?" My answer to these questions was, in substance, as 
follows: "First. The prime cause of lynching is the mistaken 
belief, widely prevalent among good people, that as great and 
dangerous criminals deserve instant death, it is morally justi- 
fiable to execute them by private violence, without trial and at 
the earliest possible moment after the guilty deed. Along with 
this belief and stimulating it to practical activity is a conviction 
that such executions inspire the highest degree of terror, and 
are thus more efficacious in preventing atrocious crimes than 
legal executions would or could be. With some economically 
minded persons the cheapness of lynching and consequent saving 
of public expense is a consideration not without weight and influ- 
ence. Many who would not participate in a lynching are grati- 
fied, when one occurs, that the affair has gone off without cost 
to the county. And the like economical motive operates with 
redoubled force on the question of arresting, trying and punish- 
ing the mob. It would increase the taxes, bankrupt the treasury, 
ruin the county. Several causes contribute to the progressive 
increase of lynching. Probably the usual provocations are annu- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 229 

ally more numerous, but whether they are or not, such an evil 
as lynching naturally moves with accelerated velocity, the aveng- 
ing mind of the country is more and more on the alert to detect 
and capture offenders, and a sort of rage or passion for enforcing 
lynch law has sprung up and become widely spread. Men in 
greater and greater numbers have found out that to usurp the 
function of administering punishment affords a pleasurable emo- 
tion of satisfied justice. They taste the baleful sweets of personal 
vengeance, and find the hot gratification of inflicting death 
(where they are sure it is deserved) is more enjoyable than the 
cool and tranquil spectacle of its infliction by the public execu- 
tioner. This emotional element has been present and somewhat 
active from the beginning, but it is more energetic now, and, 
like all unchecked indulgence of the passions, swells to larger 
proportions as time advances. Second: When good people do 
wrong because of an erroneous opinion which they entertain, the 
appropriate remedy is to bring about the rejection of that opin- 
ion and the adoption of a more correct view of the subject. This 
is the remedy for lynching. As to the best method of making 
the remedy effective, there might be room for doubt if the 
obnoxious opinion were entertained alone by those who engage 
in lynching. In that case it could be urged that the most speedy 
and efficacious means would be enlightenment by the infliction 
of punishment. But the opinion is shared in by many who do 
not act upon it, but who, nevertheless, sympathize with the 
heresy, and are not unwilling that it should be carried into prac- 
tice by those whose faith in it is strong enough to generate works. 
These passive believers are numerous enough to afford the active 
lynchers all the neighborhood shelter they need to screen them, 
through public sentiment, against punishment. Argument 
addressed equally to both classes is the only available instrument 
for uprooting the opinion, or so weakening it as to render the 
vicious conduct it inspires practically amenable to penal law. 
Third : There is abundant reason to conclude that a considerable 
number of persons, not otherwise abnormal in thought, feeling 
or conduct, would rather assist at a lynching than have the guilty 
party tried, convicted and executed according to law. The admin- 



230 A MEMORIAL OF 

istration of criminal law is not less perfect than it has ever been. 
There is little danger that a person so certainly guilty as to lead 
an honest lynching party to execute him would not be convicted 
and punished if tried regularly by court and jury. Men are 
lynched, not because they would escape if dealt with by judicial 
methods, but because lynchers prefer their own method for three 
reasons. It is more expeditious and terrible ; it is cheaper ; and 
it is more satisfying to the feelings. If a man ought to be 
lynched (and so the lynchers always believe), what besides lynch- 
ing could do full and complete justice? Lynching is not a mere 
mode, it is also a measure, of punishment. So its advocates 
seem to think." 

In taking leave of the subject at the head of my paper, as 
well as of the digression from it into which I have allowed myself 
to wander, I declare in the most impressive language at my com- 
mand, that in this mysterious, difficult and wonderful human life 
two things are barely possible. One of these is to raise a baby, 
and the other is to try a stubbornly litigated case correctly. The 
very strongest case, if "fought to the finish," has all the naked- 
ness and is exposed to all the perils of a healthy infant. It is 
liable to be carried off by croup, whooping-cough, measles, 
mumps or anything that can be given or taken by legal contact 
in a forensic atmosphere. The trial judges are by far the most 
important public servants in the business of saving case life, and 
shackled as they are by the tongue through legislative dis- 
trust, I marvel at their success. All honor to the patient, labori- 
ous, able and faithful trial judges of Georgia ! 



THE LAW, AND THE IRRELEVANT. 






An Address by Judge Logan E. Bleckley Before the 

Sixteenth Annual Session of the Georgia Bar Association, 

Warm Springs, Georgia, July 6th, 1899. 



Reprinted from Annual Report. 






THE LAW, AND THE IRRELEVANT. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen: 

I am here as the guest of this Association, and I feel proud 
of the occasion and the opportunity. 

Duty and inclination both urge me to utterance, but beyond 
acknowledging my obligation and testifying my pleasure, I am 
not sure of finding anything appropriate to say, notwithstanding 
I have appealed beseechingly to premeditation as well as to 
inspiration for succor and supply. But no lack of the appropri- 
ate shall make me entirely silent. Hospitality bids me speak, 
and the ancient garrulity of the invited guest stirs within me. 
The inappropriate, thank Fortune, is always available. Of it 
there is never any scarcity, and so long as it abounds there is no 
absolute necessity for being dumb. 

I take courage also from another consideration. Surely I can 
trust to the friendly sentiments which I entertain towards this 
Association and all its members, to my interest in its career, its 
welfare and its usefulness, and to my connection with its past 
history and labors, to lend some degree of appropriateness to 
any brief address which my habitual thoughts and feelings may 
prompt me to make in your hearing. These thoughts and feel- 
ings are the resources on which I shall rely. 

I greet you, my brethren of the Bar, jointly and severally, 
with the heartfelt assurance that age does not weaken the tie 
which binds me to you, and that death alone can break it. I 
remember with gratitude all you have done for me, all the hon- 
ors you have conferred, or caused to be conferred upon me, all 
the compliments you have paid me, all the generous praise you 
have bestowed upon me, all the indulgence you have shown me, 
and all the helpful assistance which many of you have afforded 
me in the performance of duties often onerous and distressing. 
And you, the living, who are here bodily present, are but part of 
the audience to whom I address these words. I speak to an 
invisible as well as a visible audience, and what I say applies 
alike to both, with this difference, that my remembrance of obli- 



234 A MEMORIAL OF 

gations to the dead is attended with sadness and melancholy, while 
my obligations to the living inspire cheerfulness and promote 
enjoyment. I am truly glad to be indebted to you, although your 
claims upon me are so large that I am hopelessly insolvent and 
can never pay. In shaping the new tax law it ought to be so 
framed as to protect you from taxation on these claims, for 
they are utterly worthless. I hope the statute when perfected 
will not even require them to be specified in your returns, though 
I am aware that it is expected and perhaps intended that every- 
thing else known or discovered, with a due proportion of the 
unknowable, shall appear in somebody's return, or in the returns 
taken altogether. 

Having said enough, and more than enough of myself, I will 
touch briefly on that ever-living theme, the Law. 

The Law is like life, the longer we know it the better it seems. 
Its beneficence shines brighter and brighter to the old lawyer 
as he grows older. Its majesty becomes more imposing, its 
grandeur more exalted, its utility more comprehensive and 
precious. With clearer vision he sees the attributes of sover- 
eignty, their transcendent glory, their sublime beauty, and their 
all-embracing bounty and benevolence. Save God alone, what 
is more worthy of reverence than the Law. Yet some there are 
who stint obedience to its mandates and both usurp and defy its 
authority. If good citizens do this, alas for the sophistry of 
thought or of feeling which misleads them ! Did they ponder 
soberly a few simple elementary truths it would be enough to 
restrain them; for good citizens, I am persuaded, do not wilfully 
depart from good sense and right reason. The truths I commend 
to them are these : By its very nature law is supreme ; its domin- 
ion within its rightful sphere is exclusive ; every person, without 
exception, owes it obedience, and the disobedience of one person 
is no reason, moral or legal, for disobedience by another; the 
existence of one criminal is no rational ground for the existence 
of two, or a dozen, or a hundred ; and that one class of offences 
does not stop is no reason why another class should begin, or 
having begun, should be continued. Attentively considered, 
these propositions will be found as certain and self-evident as 
the axioms of mathematics. They are true now, have always 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 235 

been true, and will be true throughout eternity. And I will add 
that nothing but the irrelevant in the shape of fact, thought or 
feeling can hinder their acceptance as truth by all rational beings, 
whether human, superhuman or subhuman. And I warn every 
candid mind that hesitates as to their acceptance to look out for 
the particular irrelevancy which causes its embarrassment, and 
resolutely silence or expel it. 

This brings me to the last topic of my address, which is the 
Irrelevant, coupled with a national example of it. 

Under the inspiration of international chivalry, we instituted 
an action at arms against the Spanish Monarchy, suing as pro- 
chein ami for humanity. The particular group of humanity 
sought to be benefited consisted of the Cubans, who were strug- 
gling for independence. They had fought so much without suc- 
cess that conditions had become inhuman, and we concluded that 
more fighting, if we took a hand in it, would render them human 
again. So we fought, were victorious and recovered all we 
sued for on the score of humanity. Here diplomacy set in, and 
we amended our pleadings. Hitherto we had been for our 
wards; now we put in for ourselves, and in the end recovered 
the Philippine Islands and brought upon us a bloody oriental 
war, a most irrelevant war, and yet we must fight through it or 
do what Americans have never done, back out. This is a strik- 
ing and costly lesson in the might and mischief of the irrele- 
vant. How much irrelevancy there was in this national example 
may admit of question, but that there was some, and quite enough 
to work serious harm, can scarcely be doubted. My own opin- 
ion is that the whole proceeding was irrelevant from the very 
inception onward. 

In spirit and temper, I am optimistic, thoroughly so; but I 
admit there are times when my optimism is severely tried by the 
irrelevant. It is the most dangerous adversary of truth and 
justice, to peace and order, to progress and prosperity, that 
exists on the earth. 

I conclude with this sentiment : Success to my successors ! 
And I lay upon my successors of every kind, official, professional 
and personal, "my heirs, executors, administrators and assigns," 
this admonitory injunction : Beware of the irrelevant. 






VALUE AS QUALITY. 



Address by Judge L. E. Bleckley Before the Twenty-third Annual 

Meeting of the Georgia Bar Association, 

Warm Springs, Ga., July 20, 1906. 



Reprinted from Annual Report. 



VALUE AS QUALITY. 

When we think at all, the subject of thought must be some- 
thing or nothing. Nothing is without existence ; it has neither 
quality nor quantity. It is of no kind, no grade or degree, no 
likeness or unlikeness, no number, weight, size or duration. 
It is nothing, simply nothing. But something, anything, no 
matter what, has both quality and quantity. These two attri- 
butes spread throughout the universe, and everything shares in 
and partakes of them. They share in and partake of each other. 
There are many kinds of both, each kind being in some respect 
different in quality from the other. There is no quality without 
some quantity, and no quantity without quality. They can be 
thought of and considered separately, but can not separately 
exist. They are always united and interlocked; each has the 
other, and everything has both. Quantity is the so much of 
quality, and quality is the what of quantity. 

In order to answer the question, "What is value?" the prob- 
lem, and the sole problem, is to find the quality by which value 
quantity is distinguished from all other kinds of quantity. Of 
course the quality sought is one which must be present, in 
every instance, in which value is present. It must also be a 
quality which is sufficiently homogeneous to admit of the whole 
being measured by one and the same common unit. We know, in 
point of fact, that labor, land, commodities of all sorts, money and 
credit can all be measured by comparison with the same stand- 
ard of value. This would be impossible if they did not possess 
value quality, that is, some quality common alike to them all. 
Anything to which this quality belongs has value; anything 
without it is destitute of value. 

Utterly useless things are without value. They stand to the 
universe of value just as nothing, or non-existence, does to the 
universe of being. They are not in it. They are economic 



240 A MEMORIAL OF 

ciphers. Useful things also are without value unless they wear 
the harness of ownership. If they belong to nobody they are 
not assets. And the same is true if they are harnessed so loosely 
that they may be treated as belonging to everybody — for free 
use at pleasure by each and all alike. The two conditions are 
virtually one and the same, for it is of the essence of ownership 
to be exclusive as well as inclusive ; that is, to exclude some per- 
sons and include others. Where none are shut out, enclosure 
serves no purpose. Value is confined to useful things which 
have a single owner, or a limited number of owners; and it is 
further confined to such things as admit of being passed from 
one owner, or set of owners, to another. Thus utility, owner- 
ship and the possibility of changing ownership are essential to 
value. 

Utility is fitness and capacity for supplying want as a need 
or of gratifying it as a desire. Apart from their utilities, all 
our possessions, all the subjects of ownership, are but dust and 
ashes. If the utility of things could remain to us and be appro- 
priated to the service of our wants, it would not matter if things 
themselves perished or were blotted out of existence. We might 
dispense even with our own bodies without any sense of priva- 
tion if they were of no use to us. Who would care for causes 
if effects could be had without them? What woman, for 
instance, would be troubled with a husband if she could have 
all his utilities free from incumbrance with himself? Or what 
girl would want a lover if she could have love and all its 
delights, consolations and satisfactions without him to worry, 
perplex and disturb her? 

Nothing but utility can respond to human need or desire. 
Utility stands to v/ant somewhat as medicine stands to disease, 
with this difference, that want is a universal malady with which 
humanity is afflicted both when in health or out of health. Sick 
or well, we have a multitude of wants, not one of which can 
anything but utility mitigate or heal ; and in most cases any pos- 
sible cure is only temporary; the appropriate remedy must be 
administered over and over again so long as life endures. Nor 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 241 

is death itself a complete deliverance. We then need the service 
of the undertaker, the funeral ceremony and a final resting-place. 

Wants, present and prospective, are so numerous, and many 
of them so urgent and inexorable, that under their united 
pressure the whole industrial activity of the race is engaged in 
the production, preservation and distribution of utilities with 
which to serve and satisfy them. 

Production and exchange are the two methods of procuring 
utility besides the bounty of nature, human beneficence or the 
accidents of fortune. 

Exchange is a means of distribution after production has 
taken place, or of regulating distribution in advance of produc- 
tion. Some persons produce nothing; others consume a part 
of their products and have a surplus; others consume none 
of their own products, but depend on exchange for a supply of 
the particular utilities adapted to their wants. As all are con- 
sumers, each of these classes will have a want common to all. 
This want is the want for exchange. The non-producer will 
want to exchange what some one else has produced for what 
he needs ; the producer who has a surplus will want to exchange 
that surplus for something else ; and the producer who has no 
use for his own products will want to exchange them for other 
products adapted to his own wants. Thus arises the want for 
exchange, which is not the less a want because other wants stand 
behind it and give origin to its existence. The utility called for 
by this want, and the only one which can respond to it, is utility 
for exchange. This utility is common to all exchangeable things, 
and in respect to it such things differ in no regard save as to 
more or less, some of them having more and some less utility 
for exchange than others. Other utilities are static and rela- 
tively to this utility which is dynamic, are specific or particular. 
They are utilities for food, for clothing, for lodging, for educa- 
tion, for pleasure, amusement, etc., but utility for exchange, 
while particular, is also a general utility and embodies the great 
multitude of diverse and particular utilities. It is that utility by 
which any and all others lodged in exchangeable things may be 



242 A MEMORIAL OF 

procured by those who do not produce them. The want for 
exchange is usually for one or the other of these purposes, for 
re-exchange, for consumption, or for accumulation; and utility 
for exchange is alike available for any of these purposes. All 
dissimilarity of wants disappears in the want for exchange, and 
all dissimilarity of utility disappears in the utility for exchange. 
From this it results that utility for exchange can be definitely 
quantified, and it is the only utility which can be quantified so 
as to embrace every specific utility, and give a common sum or 
product for all kinds of utility whatsoever. The utility for 
exchange includes all the others which can be exchanged, as 
white light includes all the colors of the solar spectrum. It is 
both an aggregate of the others, and at the same time a particu- 
lar utility unlike any one of them. 

Wants exist wherever there is need attended with desire, 
and often when the need is not so attended. We may need a 
severe surgical operation, though to receive it be in the highest 
degree undesirable. So it may be needful to contract a debt or 
to part with our money in making necessary purchases, though 
we had rather not. On the other hand, we may desire things 
which we do not need, and which it would be better for us not 
to have. We may even desire to be extravagant and wasteful, 
or foolishly ostentatious. Nevertheless, desires of this sort are 
wants, and their gratification depends upon the appropriate util- 
ity. The want for exchange is both a need and a desire, and in 
many cases has all the vehemence and urgency of our most impe- 
rious wants for specific utilities ; for in numberless instances 
exchange is the only means of procuring them. But for this 
means millions upon millions of persons could not exist through 
a single month, and many with ample resources for exchange 
would be unable to procure food and fuel for to-morrow, save 
by appealing to charity. In civilized society it is not improbable 
that men of the largest wealth would be without so much as 
bread and cheese for dinner to-day, could their wants not be 
provided for by exchange. The want for exchange is the great 
purveying want, and utility for exchange is its source for supply. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 243 

All the other wants urge and importune this one, and upon it 
is concentrated their united energy ; and it is thus that their 
pressure is felt in the marts of the world and in every hamlet 
and neighborhood within the bounds of civilization. 

It is by means of utility for exchange that the wants of others 
are made tributary to our own and ours to theirs. Their wants 
prompt them to supply ours, and ours prompt us to supply theirs. 
Exchange is cooperation under non-cooperative motives. It is 
harmony by antagonism, altruism by egotism, the social through 
the solitary, benevolence through selfishness, mutuality by reason 
of exclusiveness, union in consequence of division. It remedies 
division of labor by admitting all laborers to share in the fruits 
of a common productive activity. In so far as these fruits are 
consumed by their respective producers, demand and supply are 
balanced, but the excess becomes common stock, forming a pool, 
to which every member of society resorts for a part of his sup- 
plies and from which every one draws as much as he puts into 
it, the utilities withdrawn by each being generally different from 
those he contributes. 

What the producer consumes of his own products may be 
considered as having the same utility for exchange as have the 
like products which enter the market and are sold for the market 
price. Since he needs them for his own consumption his keep- 
ing them for that purpose is equivalent to selling them and then 
buying them back immediately to answer his own want for 
them. Thus, utility for exchange is not confined to things actu- 
ally exchanged, but appertains equally to things which are never 
sold. Accordingly, in taking stock, or collecting statistics of 
wealth, or in making returns for taxation, things held for con- 
sumption are always counted as being of the same value as 
similar things bought and sold. They fall within the principle 
of dividing the spoils of war equally between him "that goeth 
down to the battle" "and him that tarrieth by the stuff." 

We see now that the proper definition of value as quality is 
utility for exchange, the utility which is common to all exchangea- 
ble objects, and the only utility which these objects, whatever 



244 A MEMORIAL OF 

they may be and wherever they may be, share among them and 
in which they all participate. Some of these objects are good 
for one use, some for another, and some for another, in endless 
variety, but they are all of use for exchange, though some of 
them, such as paper money, promissory notes and bills of exchange, 
are good for nothing else. Utility for exchange is the some- 
what of which the attribute of value consists, and from which 
results that sort of some which we measure, reckon and calcu- 
late when we estimate things according to their value and 
express the results in dollars, cents and mills, or in any other 
unit of currency and fractions of that unit. To say that a thing 
has value is the same as to say it has utility for exchange, and 
to say it has utility for exchange is the same as to say it is 
valuable. Things which have value are of three general classes, 
labor, commodities and rights. These only are the subjects of 
ownership, and these only can be bought and sold. 

Both ownership and the possibility of changing ownership 
by mutual consent of parties, are essential to the existence of 
value. Obviously, ownership alone would not suffice to make 
room for value. There might be ownership without a scintilla 
of value. This would be the case if all ownership of things, 
their uses and products, were legally and perpetually stationary ; 
if the first owner could never pass or transmit his title ; that is, 
if there could be no second or subsequent owner of anything 
whatever. So, too, might there be both ownership and change 
thereof without value. This would be the case if ownership 
could pass from one to another by gift, will. or inheritance only, 
but never by contract, never by mutual consent of parties, rest- 
ing on the acquisition of something by each of them as a con- 
sideration for parting with something else. Under a system of 
ownership thus restricted by law and made effectual in practice 
there would be no sale, swap, or barter, no renting or hiring, 
no lending for interest or other recompense, no exchange of any 
kind, and consequently no value. 

The essential nature of value is bound up with disposition 
by contract, and is no less fixed and immutable than the multi- 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 245 

plication table. The concurrence of all mankind would not 
suffice to alter the nature of value or its ultimate dependence 
on contract. 

Value, besides being a basis of credit and of social standing, 
has but one function. It can be applied directly to one use only, 
namely, the shifting of ownership by the exchange of one thing 
for another, something for something else. Several conse- 
quences result from this limitation on the office and use of value. 
The first is, that a thing, however useful it may be, can have no 
value unless it is a subject of ownership, or if it belongs equally 
to all mankind. Accordingly, the air, the light and heat of the 
sun, the high seas, etc., are without value. The second is, that 
useless things, or things so trivial as that no one cares for their 
ownership, are also without value. And the third is, that any- 
thing of which every one has enough for the present with full 
assurance of an adequate future supply, though it may be both 
highly useful and the subject of ownership in severalty, has no 
value. An example of this is the case of the manna in the wil- 
derness, where for nothing but the labor of gathering and storing 
it a daily supply of over two quarts of food for each person in 
the community was furnished by Divine bounty. Ample quan- 
tity and uniform distribution were both present to discourage 
the commercial spirit, yet the report of the case suggests that 
the enterprise of some of the beneficents may have been on the 
alert for profitable trade in this celestial article, notwithstanding 
the apparent absence of demand, for in violation of the order 
to leave none of it "till the morning," the experiment of hoard- 
ing it was tried; but the commodity perished on first hands 
before it could be sold, if indeed any sale was contemplated. 
Perhaps the object of fruitless experiment was only to save the 
labor of gathering after the next period of precipitation. Be 
this as it may, it is easy to see that there was really no market 
for the bread of the wilderness, no reason why any of it should 
change owners, and though the sale of it was not expressly for- 
bidden, it was, we can be sure, of no value. 

A close approximation to this case is that of water for drink- 
ing, bathing and washing purposes under average circumstances. 



246 A MEMORIAL OF 

Ordinarily, where no considerable expense has been incurred 
for an artificial supply, water is free to all consumers. Each 
person has, or can get at will, all he needs without other 
cost than going or sending to where nature has placed it and 
dipping it up. In point of fact, water is thus in most places 
generally out of commerce and remains so, for the reason that it 
is without value, although everybody requires and must have it. 
All objects of value, besides labor in its several varieties, con- 
sist of those things, corporeal and incorporeal, which, in the 
broadest sense of the term, are called assets. These include all 
property, real and personal, and hence money, rights and credits, 
everything whatever which will exchange for anything else, 
either by means of sale or transfer, or by means of collection 
through voluntary or enforced payment. A right to receive 
payment stands as the subject of ownership until payment is 
made, when the right becomes extinct and in lieu of it the cred- 
itor acquires ownership of the money or other things received 
in payment, and the debtor parts with this ownership and has 
thenceforth freedom from the burden which his obligation to 
pay imposed. Though the payment does not involve any fresh 
contract, but only executes a previous one, there is a real change 
of ownership consummated at the time payment takes place, for 
the creditor parts with the right, which returns to the debtor 
and becomes extinct, and the debtor parts with the medium of 
payment, the same passing to the creditor and becoming his 
property. And the like view holds in reference to making and 
receiving satisfaction for wrongs and injuries, the right to 
redress being a subject of .ownership, and though generally not 
assignable is exchangeable between the parties themselves 
equally with a contractual obligation ; and hence such a right 
may be treated as assets, if the cause of action and the solvency 
of the wrong-doer be sufficiently certain. It puts but a slight 
strain on the word "exchange" to apply it between debtor and 
creditor, or between wrong-doer and the injured party, so as to 
embrace the act of payment or making satisfaction. The rendi- 
tion of labor for wages is a veritable case of exchange, although 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 247 

labor perishes as fast as it is performed, just as a right to receive 
satisfaction of a debt or for a tort perishes the moment satisfaction 
is realized. It may be added that, although labor itself can not 
be treated as assets, for the reason that it has no existence except 
momentarily during the time of its performance, an existing 
right created by contract to have labor performed will constitute 
assets the same as any other legal right to a future rendering 
of payment. 

Perhaps it is needful to remark that in enumerating objects 
of value the term "thing" includes the use of things, and that 
the use counts as a thing in all cases where the substantial own- 
ership of the use is severed, whether for a longer or shorter 
period, from the ownership of the thing itself. Thus a man 
may rent his farm for a year or for several years to one person 
and sell it to another, or he may sell a horse and retain in him- 
self the use of it for a day or a month. So well is the use of a 
thing of value that it is only on account of its use or uses that 
a thing has any value at all. 



WIT AND WISDOM OF CHIEF JUSTICE 

L. E. BLECKLEY IN THE 

GEORGIA REPORTS. 



Paper Read by Albert H. Russell, Augusta, Ga., 

Before the Fifteenth Annual Session of the Georgia 

Bar Association, Atlanta, July 7th, 1898. 



Reprinted from Annual Report. 



WIT AND WISDOM OF CHIEF JUSTICE 

L. E. BLECKLEY IN THE 

GEORGIA REPORTS. 

Every lawyer who is familiar with the Reports of the Supreme 
Court of Georgia, must have been deeply impressed by the opinions 
of Chief Justice Bleckley. This is so not only because of his great 
ability as a jurist, but also on account of the quaint humor with 
which he enlivens the discussion of intricate legal questions, and 
the attractive style in which all his opinions are written. They 
are the only ones of their kind, and are remembered when those 
of other able judges are forgotten. 

It is of interest to note that since his resignation from the 
bench, he, at the request of the Court, wrote the opinion in the 
case of Green v. Railroad Co., 97 Georgia 36, and in the case of 
Board of Education v. Purse, 28th S. E. Rep. 901, a letter writ- 
ten by him to counsel for plaintiff in error is cited as authority 
to sustain the position of the majority of the Court. 

It is not my purpose to discuss his opinions from a legal 
standpoint, but to lay before you a collection I have made from 
his many sayings that have attracted my attention, some for 
their wit and all for their originality. 

54th Georgia. 

"Let the declaration and the copy-note, in this case, be read 
together in a spirit of candor, and there is not one man in a 
thousand who would be likely to misunderstand them. To miss 
the meaning, the reader would have to be a man of much learn- 
ing, and one whom much learning hath made mad." — Jennings 
v. Wright & Co., 539. 

"These restrictions upon the wife's power, imposed for her 
own benefit and protection, are perfectly consistent with the act 



252 A MEMORIAL OF 

of 1866 and the new constitution, which simply secures to the 
wife all her property, and makes it her separate estate. She is 
as much exposed to the 'kicks and kisses,' especially to the kisses, 
of her husband, with all as with only a part. If the husband and 
his creditors are allowed to prey upon her estate at all, it is not 
likely that they will be the less eager to digest it because it hap- 
pens to be large. On the contrary that would only render it the 
more tempting." — Humphrey v. Copeland, 546. 

"When man and wife cooperate for good they can do much 
good; and so, when they combine against third persons and 
cooperate for evil, they can do much harm. In protecting 
women, courts and juries should be careful to protect men too, 
for men are not only useful to general society, but to womei? 
especially." — Id., 548. 

"But the rugged path along which the jury must have walked 
to arrive at the material and controlling truth in the case, was 

made smooth, or rather cut short, by the court Under 

the instructions given to* the jury there is no certainty that the 
jury took the trouble and responsibility of passing on this plea. 
The strong probability is that they did not, for the charge of 
the court enabled them to pause at a place of perfect rest on 
the wayside." — Sugart v. Mays, 555-6. 

"In this case no appeal is made to our knowledge of law, but 
w T e are invited to exercise our skill upon a couple of facts — one, 
whether a house was built according to contract, and the other, 
whether the work was paid for. We have exercised such skill 
as we possess, touching the mysteries of building and paying, 
and the result is, that we are unable to make a better verdict 
for the plaintiff in error than the jury made, and so the judg- 
ment of the court below must be affirmed.'' — Oglethorpe Manu- 
facturing Company v. Van Winkle, 569. 

"The stock is shown to be unissued, and of a servient 
class, subject to assessments, which have the first lien upon it, 






LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 253 

and even now, burdened with an unpaid assessment for a con- 
siderable sum It seems to lie, as yet, in the womb 

of the corporation, not having reached a development and 
maturity warranting it to be issued to the owner. It may be 
compared, not inaptly, to the expected issue of a slave, or to a 

foal not yet brought forth To delay creditors 

here until they had dealt with such security as that in Tennes- 
see, would be to send them away, not to realize, but to experi- 
ment. That security is not ripe ; the one in Georgia, so far as 
appears, is made and ready for harvest. Let it be gathered 
in." — Callaway v. People's Bank, 574-5. 

"This was a claim case with a garnishment in the belly of 
it."— Wilkinson v. Chew, 603. 

"If the evidence be, in truth, as strong as it is claimed to 
be, it may well be trusted to win a second verdict. Let it be 
subjected to that test, and if it succeeds we shall better under- 
stand its power, and know better how to prize it at its true 
worth." — Sewall v. Holland, 613. 

55th Georgia. 

"If the decision, foreshadowed by the court, had been one 
in denial of the motion, perhaps it would have been too late to 
withdraw ; but we do not see why a victory may not be declined 
in the very moment of success. Men do not always know what 
to pray for; and when they see that an ill-chosen petition is 
about to be granted, to be obliged to persevere in it and accept 
the boon, whether they will or not, would be a strict rule of 
practice. It would seem that they ought to be allowed to drop 
their suit and quit the court — taxed only with the costs." — 
Cherry v. Home B. & L. Asso., 20. 

"The brother was not sworn as a witness, but the sisters 
both testified, and, for women, they swore hard. One of them 
must have been in deep error, for they disagreed widelv." — 
Mixon v. Pollok, 321. 



254 A MEMORIAL OF 

"The charges of the bill do indeed make a diabolical case. 
According to them, Potts was a most mercenary and seductive 
rascal ; his wife's marriage was a fraud ; her last will and testa- 
ment was a fraud — only her death was fair. If, in very truth, 
there was such a scheme of wickedness, it is gratifying to find 
that it was mercifully overruled, so that it did no real harm to 
these complainants. It cannot be denied that Potts started out 
as executor and came in at last as owner, having succeeded the 
testator even in the office of husband. But why may not a 
Potts marry for love? and once married, it was no uncommon 
lot for him to become the favorite of his wife, and therefore 
her legatee. Half his good fortune is thus accounted for ; and 
the other half was the result of purchase, at what seems to 
have been a fair price. The jury were satisfied not to molest 
him, and so are we." — New v. Potts, 427. 

"Trial, under our system, is a cooperation of minds — a 
grave and serious consultation over what should be done and 
how the end should be accomplished. The attorneys in the 
cause are not mere carriers to bring in materials for construct- 
ing the edifice; they have a right, as representing the parties, 
to suggest where every important stone should be laid, and to 
assign reasons, drawn from legitimate sources, in support of 
their suggestions. Their reasons may be good or bad, but 
such as they are they should be heard and considered." — Van- 
Dyke v. Martin, 470. 

"In the view of some judges jeopardy arises not out of the 
trial, but out of the verdict; as if, in a combat intended to be 
mortal, there was no danger of being slain until you are hit." — 
Nolan v. State, 523. 

56th Georgia. 

"Logically considered, the trial of a criminal case is an 
effort to complete a final syllogism, having for one premise 
matter of law; for the other, matter of fact; and for the con- 
clusion the resulting proposition of guilty or not guilty. It is 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 255 

the duty of the judge to supply the jury with material for the 
major premise of this syllogism; and it is the duty of the jury 
to collect from the evidence the minor premise, compare the 
two, draw the conclusion, and declare it in their verdict. Inas- 
much as it is possible for the judge to mistake the law or mis- 
represent it, the material which he supplies, or some part of it, 
may be erroneous. Are the jury, nevertheless, to accept it as 
correct, or is it subject to their revision and correction? May 
they, if they think it faulty, reject it, and substitute in its place 
something corresponding to their own convictions of what the 
law really is? Are the scriptures of the law an open Bible, or 
must they be read for the laity by the priesthood of the 
bench?" — Habersham v. State, 64-5. 

"This case presents a contest over cattle and turpentine. 
The herdsman makes a stand against the aggressions of the 
manufacturer. The man whose vocation it is to turn the herb- 
age into beef rises up against the man who seeks to convert the 
trees into turpentine. The disputed element is fire. Fire is 
the friend and ally of him who seeks after turpentine, but the 
mortal enemy of him who rejoices in the possession of many 
cattle. The one ranges the forest with his brands of burn- 
ing ; the other, in alarm, cries fire ! and clamors for its extinc- 
tion by a court of equity. And equity, it seems, finds this a 
difficult business. It is wanting in hooks and ladders, engines 
and other appliances, and has no water-works. How equity 
is to put out the fire, or to prevent it from spreading, is more 
than we know without some thoughtful consideration. The 
complainant, however, is in a court with his application for aid 
by the writ of injunction ; and that is a writ which has arrested 
many things, and may possibly arrest fire itself. Let us see." — 
Harrell v. Hannum. 508-9. 

"A locomotive and a mule may well pass over the same 
ground, so that they pass at different moments of time. If, 
however, they contend for the same place at the same instant, 
and a collision ensues with damage to either, the diligence of 



256 LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 

their respective owners may be challenged and compared." — 
Georgia Railroad Co. v. Neely, 542. 

"It seems, from authority, that to a complete larceny by A, 
there may be added, by a sort of criminal accretion, another 
complete larceny by B: 25 Ga. Reports, 515; also, that a man 
may commit a crime as principal without being present: 30 
Ibid., 757. Compare 26 Ibid., 493; Code, sections 4305 to 
4308; 17 Ga. Reports, 346; Roscoe's Cr. Ev., 871, 872, 873. 
There is matter for much thought in these things, and mystery 
enough to bewilder one for some days. The Code seems plain; 
but the same law existed when the 25th Ga. and the 30th Ga. 
Reports were made. For my own part, judicial candor obliges 
me to say that I do not know whether the main staple of Judge 
Wright's charge in the present case, about scheming, planning 
and furnishing brain-work, is good law or not. I am not suffi- 
ciently master of the subject to overrule him, and yet I secretly 
wish he would not charge the like again. It is some little 
relief to my perplexity to find that the charge is unguarded in 
that part which refers to the prisoner as possibly instructing 
another when and how to steal." — Minor v. State, 633. 

57th Georgia. 

"The better practice is, to decline charging refined specula- 
tion, and give only coarse, sharp-cut law. What shall come to 
the jury as evidence, is for the court. What it is worth 
when it arrives, is for the jury. They can discern its true value 
with spare assistance from the bench. The judge may well 
assume that they have a fair aptitude for their share of the 
common business." — Moughon v. State, 106. 

"In thus defining them the court's dictionary was at fault." 
—Id., 107. 

"It is a mistake to suppose that a citizen can present a bal- 
ance-sheet at the city treasury, and get his losses cashed when- 
ever the improvements in his neighborhood do not go forward 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 257 

as rapidly as they might, or in the best possible manner."—^ 
Tuggle v. Mayor, etc., Atlanta, 117. 

''The motion for a new trial is the speech of the party, not 
of the judge." — McDade v. Hawkins, 151. 

"Where man and wife are acting together, on the same side 
of a question of property, they are under the temptation to do 
themselves more than justice. What is secured to the one is 
apt to be shared by the other. With respect to enjoyment, 
however it may be as to title, neither is a stranger to the other's 
fortune."— Booher v. Worrill, 238. 

58th Georgia. 

"Insurance is business, and not elaborate and expensive 
trifling." — Mobile Ins. Co. v. Coleman, 256. 

"Dead eyes that look alive are not false tokens, perhaps, and 
yet they may deceive as effectually as a skilfully executed work 
of art. They are a sort of counterfeit made by nature, and 
when offered in trade, with a representation of soundness, are 
apt to be accepted for what they appear to be. They were so 
accepted in the present case." — Tatum v. State, 409. 

"In respect both to law and evidence the verdict is good. 
Some people think it is 'smart' to cheat in swapping horses." — 
Id., 410. 

59th Georgia. 

"The scheme of removal ordained by the Act of Congress 
is open and public. It is by petition. It contemplates a taking 
with leave, and not furtively by a sort of statutory larceny." — 
Carswell v. Schley, 19. 

"For my own part, I think there are multitudes of people 
who are trustworthy and reliable in all situations and under all 



258 A MEMORIAL OF 

circumstances. Declaim against the world as we may, it 
abounds in truth, purity and integrity. The law brands no wit- 
ness as impeached just because he is not at peace with the scoun- 
drel against whom he testifies." — Skipper v. State, 65-6. 

"The defendant, while in default, may resist, passively, 
whatever is brought to attack him, but cannot make a counter 
attack. Though not allowed to return the fire, he is not obliged 
to run, but may stand until he is shot down."— Hay den v. 
Johnson, 106. 

"To be too drunk to form the intent to kill he must be too 
drunk to form the intent to shoot." — Marshall v. State, 156. 

"The brief of counsel asserts that the new trial was granted 
on Sunday. If it was, this objection should have been openly 
specified in the bill of exceptions, and not concealed under a 
generality that affords of it no hint whatever. We cannot per- 
mit a judgment to be ambushed in this court in any such 
way." — Swindle v. Poore, 338. 

"Repairs to the foundation are not attended with the same 
consequence as when the superstructure is altered. You may 
prop the execution by working on the judgment, though you 
cannot prop the levy by working on the execution." — McLen- 
don v. Frost, 351-2. 

"The truth is, that what the propounders have to carry, on 
the score of sanity and freedom, is more in the nature of ballast 
than cargo. It is just ballast enough to sail with — no more." — 
Thompson v. Davitte, 475. 

"We think the answer not so much beyond the question as 
to render any of it inadmissible. These things cannot be cast 
together so as to make an exact, mechanical fit. It is hardly 
practicable to deal with testimony as we would with bullets — 
cutting off the necks and rejecting the superabundant material 
which has run over in molding." — Id., 484. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 259 

"A good case will not be apt to miscarry on a second ven- 
ture." — Delane v. Central Railroad, 634. 

"In this case, though it is involved in law and fact, and the 
facts were numerous and complicated, the court acted as both 
judge and jury, the parties consenting to that mode of trial. 
The law and facts are thus before us blended in one mass. In 
delivering his charge as judge silently to himself as jury, we 
know not what legal propositions the court laid down. We 
suppose we must give him the benefit of every presumption on 
both branches of the case; and, so doing, we cannot pronounce 
with due legal certainty that he erred. We can suspect him of 
error, but cannot convict him. We held up the case from the 
last term, when it was argued, until the close of the present 
term, and used all reasonable diligence to discover the alleged 
errors. But the farthest advance we could make was into doubt. 
We entered that dim, misty atmosphere and could neither go 
forward nor return. There we rest." — Gray v. Willingham, 858. 

60th Georgia. 

"There is not much to dispute about, but perhaps equity can 
do more complete justice than could be done at law. As the 
chancellor wants to apply equitable principles rather than the 
ordinary rules of law let him have his way." — Morris v. Barn- 
well, 147-8. 

"It is a mistake to suppose that a city belongs to the inhabi- 
tants alone. Trade is broad, and will not brook limitation at 
the will of those who may happen to bear municipal sway. 
Commerce in Atlanta is not a close corporation — it is not con- 
fined to the elect. Whoever comes to trade may trade on the 
same conditions as attach to those who preceded them. The 
right is free to all upon the same terms; and it is in vain for 
those who are in to clamor for the exclusion of those who seek 
to get in. Atlanta is open alike to all citizens of the United 
States, and will so remain while the organic law of the Union 
is unchanged. A local policy at variance with the broad spirit 



260 A MEMORIAL OF 

of the Constitution may be attempted, but cannot be maintained. 
It may prevail in the council-chamber, but cannot gain recogni- 
tion in the court-house except as a temporary form of error." — 
Gould v. City of Atlanta, 167. 

"A corporation of this State cannot be dissolved by an Act 
of Congress, or by the administration thereof through the Fed- 
eral courts. Georgia created, and she alone can destroy. Besides, 
it is not the purpose of the bankrupt law to dissolve corpora- 
tions. 'Your money,' not 'your life/ is the demand of the 
Bankrupt Act." — Holland v. Heyman, 180. 

"As a general principle it would seem that an officer whose 
duty it was to conduct the vessel into port cannot buy up claims 
against the wreck at a discount, and take credit therefor on his 
own liabilities at par." — Id., 181. 

"The jury belonged to the vicinage, and could and did inter- 
pret the testimony in the light thrown upon it by the local gloss. 
They understood what such a mode of living in Savannah meant ; 
whether it meant concubinage or marriage. We believe its 
ordinary meaning throughout Christendom to be matrimony; 
and we are aware of no reason why it would or should be dif- 
ferently construed in Savannah." — Dillon v. Dillon, 206. 

"The jury had in their room a copy of the code, but did not 
look at it. To grant a new trial on this ground would be to do 
as has not been done hitherto." — Lovett v. State, 260. 

"The writer of this opinion knows from personal experience 
that an invalid may be able to ramble among the mountains and 
fish a little for speckled trout without being fit for business in 
the court-house. The other members of the court are weak in 
the faith and seem loath to recognize a state of health so ambigu- 
ous. We all think that as the defense on the record was not 
sound in law, the refusal of a continuance to establish it was 
not positive error." — Brumby v. Barnard, 294. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 261 

"The rind and pulp of an orange, or the envelope of a letter 
and the letter itself, are not much more closely connected than 
a passenger's trunk and its contents, when the trunk is in the 

care of the carrier, and the key in the passenger's pocket 

The traveler had almost as well be put in jail for an hour or 
two, as to have his trunk or valise locked up at the railroad sta- 
tion. Perhaps he would rather go to jail for a little while if he 
could have the company of his baggage, than be free on con- 
dition of parting with it. To separate him from that which is 
the object of his chief care and solicitude through the whole 
course of his wanderings, is hard upon him indeed. Between 
passenger and baggage there is a relation beyond that of mere 
ownership. When baggage is lost, it is not simply privation ; it 
is bereavement." — Western Railroad v. Thornton, 301-2. 

"A ministerial officer, armed with due process of law and 
acting within it, is the servant of the State, and not of the 
plaintiff." — Western Railroad v. Thomas, 313. 

"Interest is a great rascal, but is not an absolute reprobate. 
Its doom is not perdition at all events. It has a chance of salva- 
tion. It is not obliged to commit perjury." — Davis v. Central 
Railroad, 333. 

"The love of justice! What a great love it is?" — Id., 334. 

"This shows that jurors are to be driven upon the prisoner 
in single file, and not by platoons. He is not to be confused by 
looking upon a multitude of faces at once, but is allowed to scan 
each countenance separately. He is not to be thrown into alarm 
by too strong an exhibition of force. He takes his jurors one 

by one, and wrestles with them single-handed There is 

no reading in the books of a regular march of the jurors upon 
the prisoner, and of his having to welcome or repel more than 
one at a time." — Williams v. State, 372. 

"The truth is, a debt is equally just, whether there is a 
remedy for its recovery or not. Remedy does not make jus- 



262 A MEMORIAL OF 

tice, but has relation to enforcing justice. There is a kind of 
injustice in waiting for legal remedies to be invoked, and in 
obliging creditors to incur the expense and delay of prosecuting 
them. Whoever wishes to practice the highest order of justice, 
will pay without being sued. Right, not remedy, is the founda- 
tion of duty. Remedy is the whip that urges performance on 
the unwilling." — Langston v. Aderhold, 380-1. 

''Completion is an indispensable fact, as much so as labor, 
and the affidavit of foreclosure might as well not mention labor 
as not aver completion. . . . The court did not err in holding 
the affidavit defective ; and the entire superstructure built on 
such a foundation had to tumble." — Walls v. Rutherford, 441. 

"Diligence to detect fraud is as much incumbent upon a 
party who labors under no disability, as to do any other act in 
which his interest is involved. He must look about him and see 
what villainies environ him. If he has been caught in a net, he 
must feel for the meshes." — Sutton v. Dye, 449. 

"The true law, everywhere, and at all times, delighteth in 
the payment of just debts. Blessed is the man that pays. The 
practice of paying promptly, and to the last cent, tends to the 
cultivation of one of the most excellent traits of human charac- 
ter. If debtors were guided by their own true interest, on an 
enlarged scale, they would be even more clamorous to pay than 
creditors are to receive. Tender would be more frequent than 
calls for money. Debt is the source of much unhappiness. The 
best possible thing to be done with a debt is to pay it." — Rob- 
erts v. Tift, 571. 

61st Georgia. 

"In taking a wife a man does not put himself under an over- 
seer. He is not a subordinate in his own family, but the head 

of it A subjugated husband is a less pleasing and less 

energetic member of society than one who keeps his true place, 



. LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 263 

yet knows how to temper authority with affection Being 

a husband, he is the free head of a family, and as such needs 
no license to bind himself by his contracts — not even the license 
of his true and lawful wife." — Braswell v. Suber, 399-400. 

"The low tone of the court in ruling out testimony, was not 
a matter to be passed over by counsel at the time without 
remark, and afterwards brought up as cause for a new trial. 

Besides, suppose a tone in the Superior Court to have 

a wrong pitch, how are we to review it? We are not sure that 
mere sound is amenable to a writ of error. Perhaps, with the 
aid of score and scale, as in music, it might be brought before 
us and take its chances for reversal or affirmance." — Wheatley 
v. West, 407. 

"In order to shield himself by the bad logic of his defama- 
tory article, he should have taken care to make the logic worse 
than it was." — Tillman v. Willis, 436. 

"If not ready for action because one of the commanders is 
not in position, there should be communication with the absen- 
tee, if practicable, and a postponement until he comes up. To 
strike for victory in his absence, and after the field is lost, not 
abide by defeat, is contrary to all sound rules of forensic com- 
bat."— Hart v. Thomas, 471. 

"The case, though it has many sprangles in the record, has 
a solid nucleus which controls it." — Kirkland v. Wade, 480. 

"The bill sought to ward off, by the same means, two blows, 
with two like instruments, aimed by the same parties at the same 
object. To exact a unity in the bill more strict than this, would 
be to go beyond the sticklers for the dramatic unities — the 
classical purists in dramatic composition, who are to be satisfied 
with nothing less than complete unity of time, of place, and of 
action. May not he who attacks with a double-barrel be resisted, 
just as if he shot wih a single-barrel?" — Clary v, Haines. 526. 



264 A MEMORIAL OF 

"Mere evidence is food unassimilated ; a verdict, or finding, 
is the tissue into which it is converted by assimilation." — Schley 
v. Schofield, 531. 

"Fun is rather too energetic, even for Christmas times, 
when it looks like a disposition to indulge in a little free and 
easy homicide. Shooting powder-guns at a man as a practical 
joke is among the forbidden sports." — Crumbley v. State, 584. 

"The trustee had no direct interest in favor of upholding 
the mortgage, and it is plain he had no inclination to uphold it. 
He was a defendant in sympathy with the complainants — a 
Greek in the Trojan camp." — Colesbury v. Dart, 626. 

62nd Georgia. 

"The decree went against him; and by him all who hold or 
may hold under him thereafter, were represented. In him they 
fell. He, their head, was condemned, and they in him were 
condemned also. He was the Adam of their race. They are 
lost." — Gunn v. Wades, 22. 

"Unknown quantities are manageable in algebraic opera- 
tions, but hardly so in forensic proceedings. No court can 
safely administer a secret. But a medical secret of all others is 
the least amenable to juridical administration. To make drugs 
by concealed methods or from undeclared materials, for dis- 
semination among the people, is a business of great responsi- 
bility, affecting more or less the public health; and for a court 
to engage in it, by a receiver or otherwise, has the appearance 
of being rash. Perhaps, as a means of satisfying a final decree 
in a cause, a court of chancery might do it after taking compe- 
tent medical advice ; but before or without such advice the cir- 
cumstances would have to be very extraordinary to justify it." — 
Merrell v. Pemberton, 34-5. 

"Beside the labor which the members of this court as a 
body bestowed on the case, one of them gave to it special study 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 265 

and examination, and kept it for a very long time under con- 
sideration. In bulk and complexity, nothing equal to it can be 
easily found. In fact, it is a separate science, and to do it full 
justice upon every detail would require an opinion not less vol- 
uminous than the record itself. To write such opinion is a task 
which I could not perform to my own satisfaction or to that of 
the parties or their counsel, without ceasing to participate in 
the current business of the Supreme Court." — McLaren v. 
Clark, 117-8. 

"That a change of incumbents in the office of Attorney- 
General had taken place in the meantime, makes no difference 
in the legal principle. The Attorney-General, like other coun- 
sel, must abide consequences of acts done or omitted by his 
predecessors. Judgments, whether against the State or against 
individuals, do not yield to a change of counsel or legal advisers. 
The most eminent professional skill on earth cannot raise the 
dead to life by a motion to amend. This case was dead when 
the present Attorney-General was called to treat it, and his genius 
and learning can never reanimate its dry bones. He may well 
rest from his labors so far as it is concerned." — Goldsmith, 
Compt., v. Georgia Railroad, 545. 

"This is an unsightly literary blemish, but not a grave legal 
infirmity. In school the composition would not pass, but it may 
be tolerated in the court-house. The meaning is clear, though 
the verbal inaccuracy is glaring." — Dickson v. State, 589. 

"It is the body of the case and not certain of its limbs only, 
that the final judgment takes hold upon. Whoever brings the 
legality of an imprisonment into question by writ of habeas 
corpus, should, in the first instance, show as much cause for his 
attack as he can. He must discharge all his weapons, and not 
reserve a part of them for use in a future encounter. He must 
realize that one defeat will not only terminate the campaign, 
but end the war." — Perry v. McLendon, 605. 



266 A MEMORIAL OF 

"In a justice court, local government is realized in its last 
analysis. This tribunal is our primary — most rudimentary 
organ of home rule. It is the ne plus ultra of judicial simplicity. 
An action in it is not by petition or declaration, but by sum- 
mons; and the summons may be a very scanty document. It 
seems designed merely to put the defendant in that state of 
mind in which a man, a little roused and irritated exclaims, 
'What's the matter? What's up? What's to pay?' Practically, 
as experience teaches, when curiosity is thus excited, both mem- 
ory and inquiry become active, and it is not long until the 
surprised individual knows clearly and definitely 'what it's all 
about.' "—Atlanta, etc., R. R. v. Hudson, 683. 

"Virtue in all the offices of life must take its order from 
duty, not from happiness. Happiness is not the mistress of the 
moral household, but the favorite daughter. Though the most 
cherished, she is not the most discreet member of the family. 
She is to be checked and restrained, and not have her own way. 
With too much indulgence, or too much present gratification, 
she becomes a spoiled child, and degenerates into misery." — 
Daniel v. Frost, 706. 

"To do as one pleases, even when he pleases, is his business, 
to act absurdly or from low impulses, is a very precious right. 
The right, especially, to harry and bedevil one's creditor is inesti- 
mable."— Id., 708. 

"Generally, the older of two deeds from the same person to 
different grantees, covering the same premises, is the better. In 
ordinary legal meteorology, if either is mere vapor while the 
other is solid, it is the younger, not the elder which is among 
the clouds." — Jones v. Georgia Railroad, 720. 

"Restitution before absolution is sound in law as in theology; 
and that doctrine prevents an ex parte rescission by the plaintiff 
without restoring defendant to his original situation." — Sum- 
merall v. Graham, 731. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 267 

"Those who are impatient with the forms of law ought to 
reflect that it is through form that all organization is reached. 
Matter without form is chaos ; power without form is anarchy. 
The State, were it to disregard forms, would not be a govern- 
ment but a mob. Its action would not be administration, but 
violence." — Cochran v. State, 732. 

"Injunction ad interim is a part of equity police. It is a 
device to keep the parties in order, and prevent one from hurt- 
ing the other whilst their respective rights are under adjudica- 
tion. There is often a cry for the police when there is no real 
danger." — Kirtland v. Mayor, etc., Macon, 750. 

63rd Georgia. 

"In that stage of the litigation, even when the merits are 
clearly against the losing party, he should have such mental sat- 
isfaction as he could derive from having finished his speech. 
He should not be slaughtered with his address warm in his 
bosom, alive and undelivered. His case being finally and for- 
ever lost, with his argument unheard, he would feel perhaps, 
and sometimes justly feel, that the outrage of deciding without 
hearing him was greater, far greater, than the calamity of the 
adverse decision. He might get justice, but with it a wound 
from the court more painful than any justice which the court 
could administer; for it is not impossible that a suppressed 
speech may occasion more mental torture than a lost case. . . 
. . In a perfectly clear case, it might possibly be incumbent upon 
the chancellor to indulge the doomed party and his counsel in 
'beating the air/ and hear them as fully as if the interlocutory 
question under consideration were really debatable ; but whether 
it is or not may be left open for the present." — Early v. Oli- 
ver, 18-9. 

"It will be seen from the foregoing summary that the case 
tried belonged to the composite order ; it was partly legal 
growth and partly a concerted manufacture ; it stood with one 



268 A MEMORIAL OF 

foot in equity and the other in law ; it was compound as well 
as consolidated, yet in its ultimate analysis, it turns as to the 
land upon usury, and as to the mules upon bailment." — Tribble 
v. Anderson, 52. 

"The evidence is not conclusive. It pushes the mind into 
that great pitfall called doubt, and there leaves it. The jury 
are the best doctors of doubt that we know of, especially when 
their treatment has been revised with approval by the presiding 
judge." — Central Railroad v. Ferguson, 85. 

"It is a rare complaint against a physician that his bill is too 
small. The law puts no such pressure upon a doctor as to 
require him absolutely to charge for every visit. It allows him 
the gratification of a free and friendly call upon his patient, 
even when he has a right to put it in his bill." — Buchanan v. 
Sterling, 229. 

"The real plaintiff in an action of ejectment is the alleged 
lessor. John Doe is a mere figment of the law's imagination, 
with no more existence as a real suitor than Mercury has as a 
real god. Only during high poetic transport does the law 
regard him as a true, objective personality. Though born of 
the muse, he is dry and commonplace enough to be engaged in 
the extensive real estate business which he pretends to carry on, 
but in very truth, he is a phantom — a legal will-o'-the-wisp, an 
ingenuous conceit of the law in its rapt, poetic moods. He is 
not one of the plaintiffs which the sedate section of the Code 
we have recited speaks of." — Rutherford v. Hobbs, 245. 

"The general rule is that a complainant in a bill of inter- 
pleader merely stirs up a war and then leaves the real belliger- 
ents to fight it out, he retiring from the scene to repose in dig- 
nified ease, holding, the while, the prize which is to reward the 
victor. We do not see that in this instance there was any occa- 
sion for the complainant to take part in the combat. So far 
from being entitled to conclude the argument, he had no right 
to be heard at all." — Andrews v. Halliday, 271. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 269 

"Mrs. Rose Taylor testified as a witness in behalf of the 
State, and it is evident from the tenor and tone of her testimony 
that she considers her husband as a member of her family, and 
herself as the head of the establishment. The true legal rela- 
tion of husband and wife is in her mind reversed. Metaphori- 
cally speaking, she puts the petticoat in a more advanced position 
than the pantaloons." — Morgan v. State, 307-8. 

"According to the charges of the bill, the father had no capi- 
tal, and the son no character. The man without character car- 
ried on business in the name and upon the credit of the man 
without capital." — Nussbaum v. Heilbron, 315. 

"The suggestion is pregnant with innovation, but barren of 
law The denial of a request to charge the jury is com- 
plained of, which request, we must say, contained an excellent 
definition of a tippling-house. Most probably it was taken 
from good authority ; but the dictionary definition of a term is 
frequently the mere air of the music which the accused has 
attempted to execute with variations. Frequently, too, the varia- 
tions are so luxurious and ingenious that the air is much dis- 
guised, and to hum it over from the bench is but little assist- 
ance to the jury in following the real performance. It is 
something easier for an offender to baffle the dictionary than the 
penal code." — Minor v. State, 321. 

"It not unfrequently happens that a judgment is affirmed upon 
a theory of the case which did not occur to the court that ren- 
dered it, or which did occur and was expressly repudiated. The 
human mind is so constituted that in many instances it finds the 
truth when wholly unable to find the way that leads to it. 

"'The pupil of impulse, it forc'd him- along, 

His conduct still right, with his argument wrong ; 

Still aiming at honor, yet fearing to roam, 

The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home.' " 

—Lee v. Porter, 34G. 



270 A MEMORIAL OF 

"There is little doubt that the defendant was the deity of 
this rude shrine, and that Mary was only the ministering priest- 
ess. But if she was the divinity and he her attending spirit to 
warn thirsty devotees where to drink, and at whose feet to lay 
their tribute, he is amenable to the State as the promoter of for- 
bidden libations. Whether in these usurped rights he was serv- 
ing Mary or Mary him, may make a difference with the gods 
and goddesses, but makes none with men." — Forrester v. State, 
350. 

"It is true that the case had passed from the primary court, 
and was pending on appeal, but curative measures are not 
restricted to the early stages of a case; our 'court physicians' 
now treat chronic disorders as well as acute ones." — Burrus v. 
Moore, 409. 

"As we all know there is sometimes a drag and sometimes a 
run ; and those having business to attend to in court, must bear 
in mind that a wide variation from the average rate of progress 
may occur. Indeed, it is always probable that something improb- 
able will happen." — Warren v. Purtell, 430. 

"Like the sun, the law shines on all who are in the same 
place with equal warmth and splendor. The most charming 
and attractive woman in the universe, loaded down with misfor- 
tune, is not to prevail as a suitor where she is in the wrong, be 
her adversary whom he may." — Boland v. Klink, 453. 

"The rule of amendment is as broad as the doctrine of uni- 
versal salvation." — Murphy v. Peabody, 524. 

"The name of this young Mr. Peabody has had quite a strug- 
gle to get a correct standing on the record and retain it. I do 
not profess to be altogether certain, even now, of the precise 
name which he bears ; but the land is his." — Id., 526, 

"If I could be reinforced here by the votes, as I am by the 
opinions of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and the 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 271 

Court of Appeals of New York, I could easily put my brethren in 
the minority; but as it is, they are two against one, and I have 
no option but to yield to the force of numbers — in other words 
to 'the tyranny of majorities.' Though twice beaten I am still 
strong in the true faith, and am ready to suffer for it (moder- 
ately) on all proper occasions. My dissenting opinion in 59 Ga. 
406, is not only reaffirmed, but is widened in range so as to 
embrace all cases, actual or possible, in which assignees in bank- 
ruptcy sue in the appropriate State courts to collect assets. 
There is no limit."— Dodd v. Middleton, 639. 

64th Georgia. 

"When I was a solicitor-general, nothing in my experience 
struck me with more force than that, term after term, in each 
county of my circuit, I met substantially the same body of people 
who had connection with the criminal docket — the same array 
of prosecutors, defendants and witnesses. Here and there a new 
man would come in, and occasionally a prosecutor would become 
a prosecuted, and vice versa, and the witness class would some- 
times disintegrate and mix up with the other two; but my inti- 
mates were, and continued to be for four years, very much the 
same individuals. They were my regular customers." — Davis 
v. Mayor, etc., Macon, 136. 

"There are so many Hawks in the facts of this case, that the 
air is a little darkened. Only two of them need fix attention; 
these are George F. and Warren." — Hawks v. Hawks, 241. 

"The hardships of the particular case is no reason for melting 
down the law. For the sake of fixedness and uniformity, law 
must be treated as a solid, not as a fluid. It must have, and 
always retain, a certain degree of hardness to keep its outlines 
firm and constant. Water changes shape with every vessel into 
which it is poured ; and a liquid law would vary with the mental 
conformation of judges, and become a synonym for vagueness 
and instability." — Southern, etc., Co. v. Duvall, 268. 



272 A MEMORIAL OF 

"But must we therefore hold that a like presumption arises 
out of a proper separation — proper in time, manner and cir- 
cumstances? Surely not. And what can be more fit than for 
the court to send out a juror, attended by a bailiff, when he is 
under a stress of nature which civilized man regards as a sum- 
mons to retire ? A comparison of the various possible methods of 
meeting and dealing with such an exigency had better be left to 
silent meditation than discussed here with needless realism. It 
is enough if those who may become interested in the subject will 
form a mental picture of the situation, and contemplate it for 
themselves." — Neal v. State, 275. 

"There was too much haste. The commission issued one 
day was executed the next, and the judgment appointing the 
guardian followed immediately. Action, trial and judgment in 
two days, and no previous notice ! The surprise and shock of 
such swift inquisition into an old gentleman's wits might so con- 
found him as to prepare him for consenting through his coun- 
sel, to being an imbecile." — Morton v. Sims, 304. 

"Nonsuit is a process of legal mechanics ; the case is chopped 
off. Only in a clear, gross case is this mechanical treatment 
proper. When there is any doubt another method is to be used — 
a method involving a sort of mental chemistry — and the chem- 
ists of the law are the jury. They are supposed to be able to 
examine every molecule of the evidence, and to feel every shock 
and tremor of its probative force." — Vickers v. A. & W. R. R. 
Co., 308. 

"The point appears here in its virgin state, wearing all its 
maiden blushes, and is therefore out of place." — Cleveland v. 
Chambliss, 359. 

77th Georgia. 

"It looks too military for a judge to sit in his chambers and 
there call before him the heads of families and order them per- 
emptorily to do thus and so in the way of furnishing support to 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 273 

their wives and children, though living apart from them, until a 
suit of some sort has been instituted in some court, either of 
law or equity. We think the statute does not contemplate any- 
thing so anomalous in a time of peace, and we cannot construe 
it as a war measure." — Yeomans v. Yeomans, 125. 

''Except in a mind disappointed by the verdict, there could 
be no possible doubt of the legitimacy of the jury." — Powell v. 
A. & S. R. Co., 197. 

"In the house hog bones, in the garden hog hair, hog 
entrails, hog meat buried in the earth, refusal of the occupant 
of the premises to permit a search without legal warrant, his 
abrupt departure from home whilst the warrant was being pro- 
cured, his flight or retreat to a point more than fifty miles distant, 
and his continuous absence until arrested and brought back for 
trial, are strongly suggestive of a suspicious intercourse on his 
part with some hog or other. The jury were of opinion that it 
was the hog described in the indictment ; and as he was a near 
neighbor to that hog, and as it disappeared about that time and 
its owner went in search of it as a stolen hog, and as the hair 
and the meat found buried in the garden looked like the hair 
and meat of that hog, it is highly probable that the jury were 
not mistaken. 

"Any man who inters his pork may expect the late departed 
hog to be hunted for as stolen, if it is hunted for at all, on his 
premises." — Stevens v. State, 311 and 312. 

78th Georgia. 

"He swore one way, and talked another after the trial ; and 
they want a new trial on this ground. Of course they cannot 
get it." — Lasseter v. Simpson, 66. 

"Having thus ascertained that the case tried was the main 
bill, and it alone, we are prepared to rule on the motion made 
to dismiss the writ of error, our decision upon which was 



274 A MEMORIAL OF 

reserved until after the whole case was argued, because of the 
bewildering intricacy of the amendments, orders, exceptions, 
etc. ; the record being a swarming hive of professional industry 
and fecundity. Until this record came before us, we had no 
adequate conception of our Brother Miller's energy; and he 
doubtless will never have any conception whatever of the torture 
which his energy has cost the writer of this opinion, whilst he, 
the writer, was supposed to be taking his ease in the unroman- 
tic wilds of Upper Georgia. A skeleton in one's closet is nothing 
to such a record in one's trunk in full view of the mountains." — 
Fouche v. Harrison, 406. 

"The legal unity of husband and wife has, in Georgia, for 
most purposes, been dissolved, and a legal duality established. 
A wife is a wife, and not a husband as she was formerly. Leg- 
islative chemistry has analyzed the conjugal unit, and it is no 
longer treated as an element, but as a compound. A husband 
can make a gift to his own wife, although she lives in the house 
with him and attends to her household duties, as easily as he 
can make a present to his neighbor's wife. This puts her on an 
equality with other ladies, and looks like progress. Under the 
new order of things, when he induces her to enter into the busi- 
ness of keeping boarders, and promises to let her have all the 
proceeds, he is allowed to keep his promise if she keeps the 
boarders. It would seem that the law ought to tolerate him in 
being faithful to his word in such a matter, even though he has 
pledged it only to his wife, and we think it does." — McNaught 
v. Anderson, 503. 

"Now there is high authority for saying that 

'He that is robbed, not knowing what is stolen, 
Let him not know it, and he's not robbed at all.' 

"This, though good dramatic law, would perhaps not hold in 
real life. But another less poetic proposition is both sound and 
applicable to business : 'He that thinks he is robbed, but having 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 275 

in his purse what he thought was stolen, is not robbed at all/ " — 
Coleman v. Jenkins, 607. 

"The court in Georgia has no official banker, and no bank 
but the receiver himself. He is its Bank of England, and the 
Bank of England would not be excused by depositing with 
John H. James were his house in London instead of Atlanta. 
While the fund is passing down the brooks and rivers, it may 
flow along the usual channels of general business, but when it 
reaches the ocean it must stop, unless the court orders a reflu- 
ent current. There is no beyond." — Ricks v. Broyles, 614. 

"The theory that a contract will be usurious or not according 
to the kind of paper-bag it is put up in, or according to the 
more or less ingenious phrases made use of in negotiating it, is 
altogether erroneous." — Pope v. Marshall, 640. 

"I do not know the fact judicially, because as a judge I am 
a bachelor, but as a private individual I know that a man is no 
more capable of resisting his wife than he is of resisting him- 
self. Indeed, he is rather less able to deny her suit than to 
defend against his own. A judgment obtained in amicable liti- 
gation by a wife against her husband is mere matter of form. 
To carry on such litigation is to play a sort of comedy, but we 
cannot permit these new parties to intervene and convert it into 
a tragedy. Let the wife plaintiff and the husband defendant 
coquet at will." — Smith v. Cuyler, 659. 

79th Georgia. 

"The court cannot instruct the jury what a prudent man 
would do, for in legal contemplation the jury know it better 
than the court. If instructions on that subject had to be given, 
the jury would be the instructors and the court the instructed ; 
that is, the jury would charge the judge on that part of the 
case, rather than receive a charge from him." — R. & D. R. Co. 
v. Howard, 53. 



276 A MEMORIAL OF 

"The phraseology is elliptical, and doubtfully connected; 
there is uncertainty as to the separation of the words into sen- 
tences; whether there are two sentences where the punctuation 
indicates but one, seems uncertain; but we do not know of any 
class of persons recognized by the law as specially skilled in 
construing ambiguous writings. It might be, and perhaps 
would be a useful employment, but we do not know that any- 
body has taken it up as a business to ascertain the doubtful 
meaning of men who do not write with clearness. Obscure 
style is a literary defect, and we are not aware of any peculiar 
fitness of a maker of machinery or dealer in machinery for solv- 
ing literary problems." — Hill v. King Manufacturing Co., 109. 

"The old maxim, 'Let justice be done, though the heavens 
fall,' ought to be regarded by police courts and all other courts." 
— Hollingsworth v. City of Atlanta, 506. 

"Now, this much would not be done for any other suitor; 
there is no man who could avoid a decree for such cause as she 
sets up ; then why should this lady be indulged in so doing ? We 
dare not decide a question of right by a rule of courtesy, or sub- 
stitute deference to sex for deference to law." — Williams v. Sim- 
mons, 655. 

80th Georgia. 

"Before any presumption, not manufactured by the legisla- 
ture, can mount to the bench, it has to serve for a long season 
on the jury, and be trained for judicial administration." — Kin- 
nebrew v. State, 239. 

"As the earth is for the use of the family of man, with its 
membership by marriage and by birth constantly changing, so 
is the homestead for the use of the family to whose head it is 
set apart, no matter what changes may occur in the membership 
thereof, provided there be at all times one or more persons of 
the class recognized by law as proper beneficiaries. Exemption 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 277 

or homestead may be waived or renounced, but the right to 
increase the family, whether by marriage or birth, is not the 

subject-matter of waiver All that a man has to do after 

securing homestead as the head of a family, is to keep on being 
the head of a family without break or interval." — Nelson v. 
Commercial Bank, 329-30. 

' 'Coming events cast their shadows before,' and Bull, see- 
ing that he was soon to have a child born in lawful wedlock, 
commenced the act of abandonment immediately after the cele- 
bration of the nuptials In the present case we have a 

domestic, not a foreign family to deal with, and the father can- 
not beat the law by starting in the race of abandonment before 
instead of after the birth of the child." — Bull v. State, 705. 

"The question is whether the private parts of females are 
protected against wounding or disfiguring, or whether the pro- 
tection extends to males only It is certain that as to 

every specific organ or member designated by name as the 
subject of mayhem, both sexes are included; then why are not 
both included under the terms 'private parts of another?' It is 
true that the male has the testicles, and only upon him could 
the statute be violated by castration; but will that difference or 
any other difference in the private parts of the two sexes war- 
rant a construction of these terms, either to the effect that the 
female has no private parts, or that they are less sacred than 
those of the male? Each sex has private parts appropriate to 
its own functions ; this we know as a matter of fact and cannot 
ignore it in exploring legislative intention. It would be simple 
nonsense for us to hold that in contemplation of law a female 
has no private parts. And why should we conclude that, having 
them they are less protected by law against being injured, 
wounded or disfigured than those of the male? Whether for 
the sake of utility or appearance, hers are as much within the 
letter and spirit of the statute as his." — Kitchens v. State, 812. 



278 A MEMORIAL OF 

81st Georgia. 

"Upon a question of sexual intercourse the experience and 
sagacity of jurors might very well be trusted to run the general 
logic of the case ; but we do not think that the terms made use 
of by the court in this instruction invaded these functions." — 
Hunt v. State, 142. 

"The evidence indicates that the contending parties were of 
different colors. The case presents the race problem in a mild 
form, which problem, in all its forms, can be solved by the 
golden rule, 'Do unto others as you would that they should do 
unto you.' " — Shores v. Brooks, 474. 

"The plaintiff spoiled the instrument, and then sued the 
manager because the performer did not make good music. It 
was the plaintiff's fault that the conductor was out of tune. . . 
. . . While a second verdict is a sacred thing, it is less sacred 
than the law and the substantial justice in the case." — Peavy v. 
Georgia Railroad, 488. 

"It was suggested in the brief of counsel that this minor was 
his own guardian. If that be true in a legal sense, and his own 
act as guardian would be equivalent to that of any other guard- 
ian, he should have given the liquor dealer authority in writing 
to furnish the forbidden beverage. Perhaps if he had taken 
time to prepare such a writing, he would have concluded not to 
make the purchase, and in this way the law and the public would 
have had the benefit of his deliberation. But, of course, the 
theory that a boy is his own guardian is a mere legal conceit or 
fancy."— Blair v. State, 629. 

"Here was a single sale. At one end it required a license 
from the public, and at the other end it required a license from 
the parent or guardian. The act was carved into two parts. I 
analogize it in my own mind to cutting an earthworm in two; 
both ends would be alive. The tail was prosecuted in the first 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 279 

proceeding, and now they prosecute the head, and both have 
been convicted. I have examined the authorities to my satis- 
faction, and they seem to justify this sort of proceeding." — 
Blair v. State, 631. 

82nd Georgia. 

"The bill of exceptions recites that 'counsel for plaintiff pro- 
ceeded to reply to the argument in favor of the nonsuit, but 
was, almost at the outset, interrupted by the court, who stated 
that it was unnecessary for counsel for plaintiff to take up the 
time of the court, as the court was "dead-head" against him, 
and the court then passed the order.' We know it is frequently 
the habit of counsel to make the speech long because the case 
is weak, yet we agree with the circuit judge in thinking it need- 
less to do so That the judicial head was in the mortuary 

state described by its possessor was a necessary result of the 
evidence." — Sparks v. E. T. V. & G. Ry., 159. 

"In this degenerate age, jurors must eat. It follows that 
they are to be sent when necessary to where they can get some- 
thing to eat, and to the only place of that kind, when there is 
but one in town. It was said in the argument that the very 
atmosphere of the hotel was charged with influence in favor of 
the landlord's kinswoman and client. If the jury were hungry, 
most likely the table neutralized the atmosphere during the 
short time they were exposed to its influence." — Brinson v. Fair- 
cloth, 189. 

"A social, genial gentleman, fond of company and a glass, 
by occupation a cigar-maker, who keeps his sleeping apartments 
with the doors 'blanketed' in a fit condition for privately gam- 
ing therein, and who invites his friends at night to refresh 
themselves with beer, but has in the room, besides barrel and 
bottles, a table suitable for gaming, together with eleven packs 
of cards and two boxes of chips, one containing* eighty chips 
and the other three hundred, and a memorandum book with 



280 A MEMORIAL OF 

names and numbers entered in it, and whose guests, or some of 
them, retire hurriedly under the bed on being surprised by a 
visit from the police at one o'clock in the morning, may or may 
not be guilty of the offense of keeping a gaming-house. A ver- 
dict of guilty based on these and other inculpatory facts, such 
as the rattle of chips and money, and some expressions about 
seven dollars and twelve dollars heard by the police on approach- 
ing the premises, is warranted by the evidence, and is not con- 
trary to law."— Pacetti v. State, 297. 

"Surely the sheriff is bound to know some law. He says he 
took the advice of counsel. We suppose from the quality of the 
advice that he must have obtained it gratis." — Treadwell v. 
Beauchamp, 738. 

83rd Georgia. 

"Employees cannot be permitted to violate the rules of the 
service in which they are engaged, and thereby create a cause 
of action in favor of themselves or their widows. Indirect sui- 
cide gives no title to post mortem reward." — Central Railroad 
v. Kitchens, 89. 

"The argument of this case was able and admirable. It 
furnished a conspicuous instance of adherence to the record ; 
which on one side was spontaneous, and on the other reluctant 
at first, but at last voluntary and altogether satisfactory." — 
Beckham v. Howard, 91. 

"In the argument here the solicitor-general furnished no 
brief. He discussed the case chiefly on its merits with reference 
to the sufficiency of the evidence to warrant the conviction. We 
needed assistance on some other points in the case, but got 
none. . . . The other special questions embraced in the motion 
for a new trial we leave to be reconsidered by the court below 
if they should again arise ; and in the meantime to be studied by 
the solicitor-general in the light of authority." — Giles v. State, 
368. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 281 

"In strong contrast to the length and verbosity of the motion 
in arrest of judgment, which is expanded into fifteen grounds, 
is the brief of counsel for the plaintiff in error, which is as fol- 
lows." — Travis v. State, 375. 

"It would seem almost ludicrous to hold that a man might 
have himself incorporated, contract debts in his corporate capac- 
ity without investing a dollar of his own capital, transact busi- 
ness, and out of the proceeds pay himself a salary, instead of 
first paying the debts which in his corporate character he had 
contracted. It seems to us that no man can expect his creditors 
to run him as a corporation any more than as an individual." — 
Burns v. Beck, 496. 

"Tested by several deliverances from this bench, the report 
of a trial consisting in part of dialogue between counsel and 
witnesses concerning the facts, and in part of extraneous matter, 
is not a brief of the evidence. ... As a sample of this kind of 
matter, we now transcribe from the report under examination 
the following questions and answers: 'Q. George Washing- 
ton, if he were living, with his little hatchet, could mark them, 
couldn't he? A. Yes, sir, I suppose so. (p. 106.) By the 
Court: What is the name of the creek? A. Bob O'Sheely. 
O. Do you know how it is spelled? A. No, sir, I don't know 
as I ever saw it spelled, (p. 163.) By the Court: Did you 
ever eat any mulberries off that tree? A. No, sir. I never ate 
any mulberries off that tree in my life. (p. 171.) By Mr. 
Alexander: Did that tree bear mulberries? A. I think it did. 
Q. Pretty fair eating? A. Pretty good, I think. Q. What 
were they worth a quart? A. We didn't sell them by the peck, 
quart or gallon, either. We just ate all we got. (p. 173.)' 
This mulberry tree was killed by the plaintiff five years before 
the trial and three years before the trespass, the alleged cause 
of action, was committed." — Mehaffey v. Hambrick, 598-601. 



282 A MEMORIAL OF 

84th Georgia. 

"Very probably the suggestion that there was free liquor 
that day in Macon county was a mere pretext; for had it been 
true there is no explanation of the failure to prove its truth or 
to make some attempt in that direction. Free liquor in one 
county for use in another is rare enough to require proof. Not 
even a county court can notice such a fact judicially as matter 
of public history." — Paschal v. State, 328. 

"After the State has yielded to the Federal army it can very 
well afford to yield to the Federal judiciary. Our sister States, 
Alabama and Louisiana, have done so." — Wrought Iron Co. v. 
Johnson, 759. 

85th Georgia. 

"We have not yet heard of any law that requires a plea to 
be stricken because it is not sustained by the evidence. That 
the learned judge who tried the case was also ignorant of it, is 
strong presumptive evidence to our minds that it does not 
exist." — Andrews v. Andrews, 282. 

86th Georgia. 

"Here then is a debtor having some property, perhaps suf- 
ficient to discharge the debt. Why should it not be so applied? 
If any debt ought to be paid, it is one contracted for the [health 
of souls — for pious ministrations and holy services. If any 
class of debtors ought to pay as matter of moral as well as 
legal duty, the good people of a Christian church are that class. 
No church can have any higher obligation resting on it than 
that of being just. The study of justice for more than forty 
years has impressed me with the supreme importance of this 
grand and noble virtue. Some of the virtues are in the nature 
of moral luxuries, but this is an absolute necessity of social life. 
It is the hog and hominy, the bacon and beans of morality, public 
and private." — Lyons v. Planters' Bank, 490. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 283 

"The services of Religion to the State are of untold value ; 
but it is the glory of Religion in this country that it serves as a 
volunteer, without money and without price." — City of Atlanta 
v. Church, 744. 

87th Georgia. 

"Thrice this unquiet case has materialized at the sittings of 
this tribunal. We hope its perturbed spirit will now enter into 
unbroken rest." — Phillips v. Atlanta, 63. 

"Some cases task the anxious diligence of a court, not by 
their difficulty, but their simplicity. This is one of them. Because 
the case seemed too plain for controversy, we have had some 
apprehension that we might decide it incorrectly." — Wells y. 
Mayor, etc., 398. 

"In the ornithology of litigation this case is a tomtit, fur- 
nished with a garb of feathers ample enough for a turkey. 
Measured by the verdict, its tiny body has only the bulk of 
twenty-five dollars, but it struts with a display of record ex- 
panded into eighty-three pages of manuscript. It seems to us 
that a more contracted plumage might serve for so small a bird, 
but perhaps we are mistaken. In every forensic season, we 
have a considerable flock of such cases, to be stripped and dis- 
sected for the cabinets of jurisprudence. We endeavor to pick 
our overfledged poultry with judicial assiduity and patience." — 
Lukens v. Ford, 542. 

"Before the translation of our brother Lumpkin to this 
bench, though his judicial accuracy was remarkable, he shared 
in the fallibility which is inherent in all courts except those of 
last resort. In some rare instances he committed error, and the 
very last of his errors is now before us for correction." — Broome 
v. Davis, 586. 

"There is no combination of any two average, every-day 
people so powerful for good or evil as that of husband and wife ; 



284 A MEMORIAL OF 

and if one spouse is angelic it seems not to cripple the combina- 
tion, provided the other is intensely human." — Hadden v. Lar- 
ned, 645. 

"Some courts live by correcting the errors of others and 
adhering to their own. On these terms courts of final review 
hold their existence, or those of them which are strictly and 
exclusively courts of review, without any original jurisdiction, 
and with no direct function but to find fault or see that none can 
be found. With these exalted tribunals, who live only to judge 
the judges, the rule of stare decisis is not only a canon of the 
public good, but a law of self-preservation. At the peril of 
their lives they must discover error abroad and be discreetly 
blind to its commission at home. Were they as ready to cor- 
rect themselves as others, they could no longer speak as abso- 
lute oracles of legal truth; the reason for their existence would 
disappear, and their destruction would speedily supervene. Nev- 
ertheless, without serious detriment to the public or peril to 
themselves, they can and do admit now and then, with cautious 
reserve, that they have made a mistake. Their rigid dogma of 
infallibility allows of this much relaxation in favor of truth 
unwittingly forsaken. Indeed, reversion to truth in some rare 
instances is highly necessary to their permanent well-being. 
Though it is a temporary degradation from the type of judi- 
cial perfection, it has to be endured to keep the type itself respec- 
table. Minor errors, even if quite obvious, or important errors, 
if their existence be fairly doubtful, may be adhered to and 
repeated indefinitely; but the only treatment for a great and 
glaring error affecting the current administration of justice in 
all courts of original jurisdiction, is to correct it. When an 
error of this magnitude and which moves in so wide an orbit 
competes with truth in the struggle for existence, the maxim for 
a supreme court, supreme in the majesty of duty as well as in 
the majesty of power, is not stare decisis, but Hat justitia, mat 
coelum." — Ellison v. Georgia Railroad, 696. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 285 

88th Georgia. 

"The general morality of the law is higher than many good 
people suppose ; is very much higher in the matter of guarding 
public sales of property against collusive combinations to sup- 
press bidding. . . . No doubt many well-meaning persons, in 
their pursuit of gain, violate the law in this respect without 
being aware that their conduct is in the least reprehensible. 
They are not without conscience, but without sufficient light; 
the law is better than they take it to be." — Barnes v. Mays, 698. 

89th Georgia. 

"In my opinion it was an error to grant a nonsuit. The 
engineer lost his life by mistake of the company, and his widow 
lost her suit by mistake of the court. — Devine v. S. F. & W. 
Ry., 541. 

90th Georgia. 

"Good sense, good morality and good law are one and the 
same so long as they are not sundered violently by v legislation 
or ignorantly by judicial error. Their unity and identity, so 
far as one of the questions in this case is concerned, we find 
still intact. There is no statute to drive, neither is there any 
precedent to lead decision into absurdity or injustice." — Hull v. 
Myers, 677. 

"Both briefs furnished us in the case at bar are sufficiently 
striking to deserve mention. That of Mr. McLester is intensely 
classical. It opens thus: 'When thej mother Of Achilles 
plunged him in the Stygian waters, his body became invulnera- 
ble, except the heel by which she held him, and afterwards 
when he and Polyxena, the daughter of the King of Troy, who 
were lovers, met in the Temple of Apollo to solemnize their 
marriage, Paris, the brother of Hector, lurking behind the image 
of Apollo, slew Achilles by shooting him in the heel with an 
arrow.' 



286 A MEMORIAL OF 

"The brief of the solicitor-general is less poetic, but equally 
irrelevant. It cites seven cases from the Georgia Reports, not 
one of which has any bearing on the question, for in each of 
the cited cases the attempt to kill was successful. When a 
homicide actually occurs from the voluntary use of a deadly 
weapon, an intention to kill is very much more certain than it 
is when the man assaulted is not killed, but only shot in the 
toe."— Gilbert v. State, 694. 

91st Georgia. 

"Where rape is intended, the injury contemplated can be 
inflicted only by actual contact of the sexual organs of the man 
with those of the woman. In order for an assault with intent 
to rape to be committed, is it necessary that the persons of the 
two should be in such proximity as that the organs of the male 
shall be within what may be termed 'striking distance' of the 
organs of the female? Or, is the virile member to be treated 
as a gun which is harmless until brought within 'carrying dis- 
tance' of the target? We think not." — Jackson v. State, 329. 

"In consequence of the wide range of investigation and the 
thorough course of study into which the writer was led by the 
exigencies of this one case, he feels prepared to produce a treat- 
ise on cumulative evidence, and yet he is quite unprepared for 
the minor and more moderate task of writing a judicial opinion 
on the subject. The exact truth is that, though he well knows 
what cumulative evidence is, he does not know what evidence 
is cumulative. He can define, but cannot distinguish. Of 
course, this statement is meant to be taken literally in rare 
instances only." — Cooper v. State, 366. 

"The groom and bride each comes within 
The circle of the other's kin ; 
But kin and kin are still no more 
Related than they were before." 

— Central Railroad v. Roberts, 517. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 287 

"Society demands protection, but does not thirst for venge- 
ance. ... In so far as human punishment is without necessity, 
it is without justification, no matter who may be its author or its 
minister." — Colbert v. State, 711. 

92nd Georgia. 

"Any one who seriously doubts the correctness of this ruling 
may readily solve his doubts by studying law." — Dutton v. 
State, 15. 

"There seems to be in husbands a strong propensity, when 
dealing for their wives, to take part as principals in the trans- 
action, and the record now before us furnishes evidence that 
these husbands had that propensity and wrought some mischief 
by it."— Williams v. Roberts, 291. 

93rd Georgia. 

"There is no less skepticism in law than in theology. This 
court is called upon again and again for a fresh revelation of 
some legal truth which has already been revealed." — Central 
Railroad v. Phinazee, 488. 

95th Georgia. 

"It hath never happened from the earliest times to the pres- 
ent, that barbers, who are an ancient order of small craftsmen, 
serving their customers for a small fee and entertaining them 
the while with the small gossip of the town or village, have been 
held responsible for a mistake made by one customer, whereby 
he taketh the hat of another from the common rack or hanging- 
place appointed for all customers to hang* their hats, this rack 
or place being in the same room in which customers sit to be 
shaved. . . . The barber is a craftsman laboring for wages, not 
a capitalist conducting a business of trade or trust." — Dilberto 
v. Harris, 572. 



288 A MEMORIAL OF 

97th Georgia. 

"Every direct authority known to us is against us; neverthe- 
less, we are right and these authorities are all wrong, as time 
and further judicial study of the subject will manifest. The 
mistake made by courts and judges has been that they treat the 
problem of preferential debts as having but one pole, the affirm- 
ative pole of benefit, ignoring the negative pole of burden alto- 
gether. . . . Courts which thus reason and decide may possibly 
be reached by the late discovery of Professor Roentgen, and for 
their benefit and the benefit of the profession generally, we 
shall close this opinion with appropriate illustrations, based on 
the new process." — Green v. Coast Line R. R., 36-42. 

The Green case holds that a railroad is not the only "going 
concern" in existence ; that the husband and son of the plaintiff 
were also "going concerns," and as such were entitled to the 
equal protection of the laws. This decision is the first on that 
side of the question, and has not met the approval of some 
members of the bar. I think, however, many of the profession 
will endorse the sentiments of a lawyer who said of this case : 
"When Judge Bleckley wrote that opinion his mind was lumi- 
nous with equity." 

The State of Georgia owes much to Judge Bleckley. He 
gave the best years of his life to her service, and his opinions 
will stand as monuments to his genius, which criticism cannot 
tarnish, nor the hand of time efface. 



MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 

JUDGES IN POLITICS. 

PLEADING. 

THE IRRELEVANT IN PROCEDURE 

REVISED THOUGHTS ON LAW. 



JUDGES IN POLITICS. 

(From Albany Law Journal, vol. 49, p. 409.) 

Chief Justice L. E. Bleckley of Georgia, has written an inter- 
esting and significant letter to the Atlanta Constitution on the 
subject of judges taking an active part in politics. Although 
written with special reference to Georgia affairs, this letter con- 
tains some general truths that are equally applicable elsewhere. 
Chief Justice Bleckley says: 

"Judicial names should not appear on the roll of militant poli- 
tics — certainly not on the commissary staff. * * * It is a mistaken 
view, that a judge pending his term of office may lawfully 
liquidate his political debts. This view is too erroneous to be 
long adhered to and must soon be overruled and abandoned. The 
true theory is that every judge is politically insolvent. He has 
suspended political business and has no assets. His creditors 
must indulge him until his judicial career has terminated. Then, 
if he will, he may accumulate fresh capital and settle with his 
friends to the utmost farthing. * * * They have no cause to com- 
plain of a delay which they themselves rendered necessary by 
retiring him from the political arena and consigning him to the 
judicial cloister. To expect a judge to settle political scores 
while he is still a judge is hardly less incongruous than dunning 
a priest when he is officiating at the altar. 

I have said that a judge has no assets ; perhaps it would be 
more accurate to say that he takes a political homestead on all 
his assets for and during his term of office. In either case the 
same consequence results, for in either case he is, and ought to 
be, completely independent of his political creditors. It is need- 
less to add that, being restrained from paying his debts, he has 
no right to make donations. In short, he should consider himself 
in temporary seclusion from active politics, with no political func- 
tions save to vote as he pleases like any other citizen. * * * 



292 A MEMORIAL OF 

PLEADING. 

(From 3 Ga. Bar Assocation Report (1886), p. 40.) 

The Georgia Bar Association having under discussion the 
Report of the Committee on Delays in the Administration of 
Justice wherein certain changes in the system of pleading were 
recommended, Judge Bleckley said : 

Mr. President: In studying of late, the wide subject of 
Truth at the Bar, I necessarily had to sweep over the field of 
pleading, and I undertook to get at the bottom of it. I tried 
to reach the real foundation stone, and I think I succeeded. But 
my success, or that of anybody else, will do no good in settling 
principle if the old ways are to be followed just because they are 
old ; if we are to be obstructed constantly by the very worst part of 
the old. If we are to abide by the past, at all events, progress is 
utterly impossible. A man who wants the future to be an exact 
reproduction of the past cannot possibly progress. He is chained 
to the rock to which Prometheus was bound. According to my 
reading, the most formidable rock that has ever entered into 
literature, and the most formidable rock that has entered into 
law, is the cry, "we must avoid innovation." Innovation is 
movement, and the only question is whether our movement is 
forward or backwards. Whenever we innovate we necessarily 
leave the past and its conquests, and the only question is, whether 
we advance or retire. Nobody can change if they are constantly 
haunted with the foreboding that if they do change everything 
will be ruined. You must sacrifice the past in order to get a 
future different from the past. That is the law of progress. 
When you get a better future than the past you cut loose from 
the old way ; you renounce the past in order to have a future 
superior to the past. The past must be given a fair chance. I 
do not turn it out of Court. It is one of the most beneficent 
forces that ever operated in human affairs. We must adhere 
to it closely enough, but not too closely. It is prima facie right, 
but when you prove it guilty, convict it, and let us set up a new 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 293 

order of things. That is the general principle that ought to rule 
and overrule us. The past is prima facie right, but whenever 
you find out it is wrong, don't be deterred from making improve- 
ment, but be sure that your way is one that will set you forward 
instead of pushing you backwards. That is the principle of wise 
action with regard to reform. Nobody ought to leave anything 
unless there is light to follow, and there is no better light than 
principle. If you set up anything different from the past which 
does not rest upon principle, that is another experiment; but 
when you are sure the change is based upon principle, upon 
reason and sense, then you can make the venture. 

I know there are improvements that can be made in our 
pleading consistently with principle. I know something can be 
done that will better the past. 

If anybody thinks we have a system of pleading that does 
not call for some change, either he or I ought to get better 
instructed. What is the object of pleading? There is but one 
purpose, and that is to state the unverified case which you intend 
to convert into a verified case. The unverified matter (what you 
might call the raw material of the case), which you are going 
to work up and verify. Pleading is pure statement; just as 
much as a letter addressed to your sweetheart or your wife or 
your friend. The plaintiff complains that he has such a case, 
and he tells you what it is. The defendant says either that that 
is not so, or something else is so, and he makes his statement. 
The true rule ought to be this : the statement ought to consist 
precisely of what has to be verified. It ought not to fall short, 
or go beyond. If it goes beyond, it has surplusage matter that 
is unnecessary. Whatever is irrelevant, whatever is non-essen- 
tial in statement, ought not to be in. Let the law declare that 
every man's pleadings shall embrace a full and clear statement 
of all matters of fact, which he is required to verify, and no 
other. I would not have a bill of indictment to say that on such 
a given day a crime was committed. I would have it to say 
within the last four years. The evidence don't have to show 
any particular date. I go upon principle. If you choose to 
allege a given day, I would not prohibit it by law, but I would 



294 A MEMORIAL OF 

provide that it should not be necessary to plead with any more 
certainty than to prove. I would not have the law tell how to 
put it in, whether in paragraphs or sections; I would leave a 
party free to choose his own way to state his case ; because when 
you dictate paragraphing, and so forth, in pleading, you make 
it mechanical somewhat. 

I think the pleading ought to be free, but I think the spirit 
of truth ought to rule in pleading as well as in evidence, and all 
subsequent proceedings. A lawyer ought not to feel himself at 
liberty to plead an untruth; it is demoralizing. I think that is 
one reason we are misunderstood by the public and called liars. 
We take all sorts of liberties with truth, and brag and bluster 
and bully in our pleading. We know it don't mean much, but 
there are people who think it means what it says. They think 
his Honor on the bench absolutely sanctions and approves all 
this, and that the law does — and so, indeed, the law does. We 
allege a purely fictitious man; is not that a fool law? I do not 
care who Sergeant Moore, or any other sergeant had in view. 
Everything said in a declaration ought to present actual truth. 
The spirit of truth ought to rule in pleading as well as in every- 
thing else. As it is, we do not think ourselves bound by any 
statement we make until we come to the verification ; then we 
get concerned about truth. We do not try to prove a lie, but 
we do not hesitate at all to allege one. We have got the sanc- 
tion of the past for it. This venerable authority is held up by 
Judge Reese, though he is as good a representative of the pres- 
ent as I know of. I have the greatest reverence for the past; I 
believe in venerating what has been done by our ancestors, and 
would not throw away the battle they have won ; but I beg to 
be excused whenever anybody in the past presents anything to 
me in pleading or evidence or otherwise, in Court, that is at 
variance with truth — I would stand upon truth. I do not care 
how hoary an error is with the frosts of the past, if it is an 
error it ought to be expelled, if we can expel it, and something 
true should be introduced in its place. 

I am in favor of making our system of pleading a statement 
of the simple truth, and that each party shall be held responsible 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 295 

for pleading the truth. I would not have anything done for 
mere form's sake. What a man has to verify, that and that 
alone I would have him plead. Declare it to be the duty of all 
parties to plead the truth, so far as they know it, and if they do 
not know it, they ought to go to work and find it out before they 
begin to plead, at least, with some reasonable degree of certainty. 

Let the pleader sit down in his office, after getting full infor- 
mation about his case, and do his best to plead the truth on his 
side. What is the use of denying when the other party has not 
verified? What is the use of not guilty, or the general issue? 

How to verify is the next question. We have such a thing 
as burden of proof. The burden of proof is on the party who 
does the pleading. I would not have anybody to plead anything 
without the burden of proof is on him. What is the use of 
pleading what you do not have to prove? I would measure 
burden of proof by the pleadings. Look and see who pleaded, 
and on him is the burden. How is he going to verify? You 
will agree that the principle upon which verification ought to be 
conducted is this: unverified case should be convertible into 
verified case as expeditiously, cheaply, and with as little trouble 
or labor as is consistent with justice and the ascertainment of 
truth. I would set off the burden of proof by the burden of 
admission, and the way that I would make a party carry his 
burden of admission would be this: I would make the parties 
and the counsel verify all they could, and keep the labor of veri- 
fication off the jury and Court as much as possible. I would 
let each party demand admission, and then let the other party 
make the admissions or refuse to make them, and if he refuse, 
give his reason for so doing. You would have all that the jury 
has to try in the demand and refusal. I would not try a case 
as a whole. I would not read the declaration to the jury any 
further than necessary to make them understand the demand 
and refusal. All the time of going through a case would be 
saved. Let the plaintiff shape the demand as his case requires 
him to establish it. When you come to trial, tax each party with 
the cost of proving what he ought to have admitted, and meas- 
ure his duty to admit by what he knew or might have known 



296 A MEMORIAL OF 

by proper diligence. By working this system in good faith the 
parties can verify nearly everything before the Court comes on. 
They can arrive at the truth, the actual facts of the case.' If 
there is any demand for admission made that a party had no 
right to make, let the adversary refuse to admit. This is very 
different from the present scheme, but it conforms to truth and 
the nature of things, and is perfectly practicable. It is new, but 
anything that will be an improvement upon our system will have 
novelty. We have tried the old way and the new way, but 
have never had a way based on principle, as this would be, I 
submit. While I prefer this, I join the committee in their report, 
rather than abide by the present system. 

Verification is what costs ; pleading don't cost much. There 
is no part of the case costing much but verification. When you 
come to verify your facts, then you have got to put up money 
and consume time. I would have pleading to measure verifica- 
tion. I would simplify it a great deal, and have no more or less 
pleading than the rules of law require to be verified. I would 
have easy, cheap and expeditious verification — that is the solu- 
tion of your difficulty. The thing that gives labor to Courts and 
throws costs and expense upon parties, is verifying; it is con- 
verting crude matter into verified matter. You can make parties 
admit what they ought to admit, or make them pay for refusing. 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 29? 

THE IRRELEVANT IN PROCEDURE. 

(From 10 Georgia Bar Association Report, p. 9.) 

Discussing the question "What Reforms Are Most Needed in 
Remedial Procedure in Georgia?" Judge Bleckley said: 

I know what is most needed, but do not know how to do it. 
The thing that is needed is to expel everything irrelevant from 
judicial proceedings and to get at the real controversy. The 
thing that wastes the time in trying cases is trying nothing. You 
are not trying anything most of the time. You are trying not 
to try. It is your chief effort. The thing most needed is what 
the special pleading was intended to effect, that is to shuffle off 
everything but the question in dispute. How are you going to 
do that? If anybody can tell it will accomplish more for legal 
proceedings than anything else in this world. There are gener- 
ally a few matters which, if ascertained, would shorten the whole 
controversy. Now, if we could do this and quit marching and 
counter-marching, to make the plaintiff prove what nobody dis- 
putes, and relieve the defendant from proving what nobody dis- 
putes, it would be better. I know how they could get at the 
real controversy if they would. If two lawyers would go to a 
room like two honest gentlemen, and say our clients have a 
question between them and let us see what is the difficulty be- 
tween them. If they were to do that, in fifteen or twenty minutes 
they can shuffle off the irrelevancy and devote themselves to 
what is to be tried, to the discussion of law and facts ; the whole 
thing will be over. We will always be in mud and mire until 
we get honest men and parties to try to get at the business and 
be like gentlemen. We ought not to be employed or suffer our- 
selves to be employed in this way. It is wrong. We ought to 
be employed to find out the difference between our clients, and 
then go to work at the serious questions of the case and endeavor 
to get them solved by law and fact. That is what courts and 
counsel are for. They ought to be after that and nothing else. 
This thing of using advantages is wrong, and there will never 



298 A MEMORIAL OF 

be any sign of hope for judicial proceedings and practice until 
it is expelled. That is so, and if you know how to do that, that 
is what you know. Now if you want to discuss that part of the 
symposium, why discuss it. 



REVISED THOUGHTS ON LAW. 



From an Address by Judge Bleckley at the Twenty-second Annual 
Meeting of the Georgia Bar Association. 



Printed from Annual Report. 

Formerly I had the common conception of law, that you meet 
with in nearly all books, and in nearly all professional minds, 
that law is the product of will; that law is the relation of one 
will to another, of a superior or supreme will to an inferior 
will. I now publicly and deliberately recant that erroneous 
theory of law. My conclusion at the age of 78 years is that law 
is not necessarily concerned with will at all; that law is not 
made at all; that law is declared; that it exists independently of 
will ; that the sovereignty of the universe and the sovereignty of 
man is not in will, but is in wisdom. My present definition for 
this occasion — and I think it will serve for other occasions — is 
that law consists (notice my language, it is every word weighed), 
law consists of the essential relations between or among facts. 
Law is matter of relation of one fact to another fact, or one fact 
to several facts, or of several facts among themselves, or between 
them and another group of several facts; that law exists in con- 
sequence of the facts, and that it exists independently of any 
will; that it is not the product of a creative will, whether the 
creative will be the supreme Will or a subordinate will. That's 
my present view of law, and that is what I think Lord Coke 
really meant when he said that "law is the perfection of reason." 
That is to say, law is there wherever the facts are, and the higher 
reason, so far as we can know, will simply discern the true rela- 
tion between or among these facts. That relation so discerned 



LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY 299 

is not by the reason of any one man, as Lord Coke says, but by 
the reason of many men, or of all mankind. Law, as discerned 
by that reason, consists of these relations, that existed before the 
discernment, and, in order to be declared, it is necessary that it 
shall be discerned, but the discernment is not concerned with 
the making of the relations, only in declaring and announcing 
them. In order for law to be presented from one mind to 
another mind, of course it has to be embodied in language, be- 
cause that is a material thing, and there is no other way of 
representing it. We use language, or signs, significant signs of 
some sort, but this has nothing to do with the making of the 
law; it has to do simply with the publishing and declaring of it. 
I think that no Legislature can make law, and no court can make 
law, but the Legislature can declare it, and when the Legislature 
has declared it, the court must be silent. When the Legislature 
has not declared it, the court has the opportunity to declare 
it, and the court may speak. That is what I think is 
really done, and the gentlemen who think they are engaged 
in making law mistake their vocation, or mistake the pro- 
cess, in which they are engaged. You may say that it 
amounts to the same thing, but it does not, and to prove that 
I have only to say that a false declaration of law does not hold. 
People will say — and you can not keep them from saying — and 
think — and you can not keep them from thinking — that such 
and such is not law, I don't care whether it comes from the Leg- 
islature or the courts. If it don't declare the true relation 
between the facts, or between given facts — such of them as you 
consider — I say, if it does not declare the true real relation 
according to the perfection of reason among those facts, you 
will feel, as you read it, and you will say, when you talk about 
it, that it is not law, meaning that it is not true law, that it is a 
substitution or an erroneous or false assertion or declaration of 
law for the true assertion and declaration of it. * * * * * 
Now, you will probably be agreeably surprised when I tell 
you that I have finished my discourse on the topic of law. I 
have said all I need to say. I might say a great deal more, and 
still keep you entertained for some little time longer, but it is 



300 A MEMORIAL OF 

useless. You see what 1 mean. You see that my theory is that 
wherever there is a state of facts the law is in- those facts, just 
as much as the law of motion is in mechanics or mechanical 
bodies. This is intrinsic law, and every state of facts has its own 
intrinsic law, so that the requirements of the statute in relation 
to conduct are simply declarations of the relations that are 
involved in the given facts concerned in the statute or decisions, 
or whatever it may be, that is to be construed and applied. I 
have not quite confidence enough in years and experience to 
exclude a possibility of my being mistaken. I still recogize the 
fact that I am not infallible, but, if there is any error in this 
view, it applies only to those particular laws that we call 
"special/' All the general laws are embraced in it in my opin- 
ion. There may be in the special laws, though — there may be 
a power of making laws and prescribing what don't necessarily 
arise out of the relation of facts, but that part of the law which 
corresponds to the common law — that law which is common to 
us all — that law is of the nature that I have represented, even 
if the same meaning does not attach to these higher and more 
restricted and particular laws. I think it extends to the whole 
body, to both classes, but I do know to my own satisfaction that 
it comprehends all general laws, all laws that ought to be treated 
as applicable to everybody, to all classes of people. That much 
I say because this is a very important discourse that I am hold- 
ing with you. It goes to the very bottom of my soul, and my 
experience, and my judgment, and T want to make it exactly 
accurate, and yet I do not want to claim more than I am entitled 
to. I am thus particular in presenting to you even the shades 
of doubt that are present to my own mind in presenting to you 
my explanation of the nature of law, as it appears to me. 



INDEX. 

Addresses by Judge Bleckley. page 

Causation. President's Address, Ga. Bar Assn 171 

Emotional Justice 97 

Judge as a Factor in Trials of Fact, The 221 

Law and the Irrelevant, The 231 

Law as a Rule of Feeling 89 

Rights of Mind, The 209 

Truth at the Bar 71 

Truth in Conduct 185 

Truth in Thought and Emotion 173 

Value as Quality 237 

Addresses, Memorial, in Supreme Court. 

Branham, Joel 31 

Candler, John S 29 

Harrison, Z . D 35 

Lumpkin, Tustice J. H 40 

Miller, Frank EL. 32 

Shumate, I. E 1 36 

Admitted to the Bar 66 

Akin, John W., The Poet Bleckley 133 

Alphabet, Analysis of the 149 

Alphabet, The, Poem 150 

Ancestry of Judge Bleckley 65, 5 

Atlanta Bar Association, Guard at Funeral 22 

Autobiographical Sketch, "A Letter to Posterity" 61 

Benning, General, Poem 153 

Birth and Parentage 21 

Bleckley, James, Obituary of 148 

Bleckley, Judge L. E. 

Admitted to the Bar _ 66 

Ancestry 65, 5 

Autobiography, Letter to Posterity „ 61 

Birth and Parentage 21 

Character of 23 

Chief Justice, Appointed.. 68, 22, 1*3 

Children of _ 22 

Confederate Soldier 21 



302 INDEX 

Bleckley, Judge L. E. — Continued. page 

D. C. L. Conferred on 210 

Death and Burial 22 

Early Struggles at the Bar 67, 8 

Education _ 69 

Father's Clerk 6 6 

Humor in Decisions 13 

Industry 27 

Judge, Character as a : 26 

Justice of Supreme Court, Appointed 68, 22, 10 

Laborious worker 1 3 

Law, Begins study of 66, 7 

Lawyer, Characteristics as a 25 

Marriage 22 

Mathematics, love of 59, 11 

Metaphysics, love of _.~ 11 

Method of work 14 

Opinions 26, 15 

Personal appearance _ 22 

Poems by 153 

Poetry, love of 12 

Proceedings in Supreme Court in Memory of 19 

Railroad clerk .'. 68, 21, 8 

Relations with the Bar 17 

Reporter of Supreme Court 9 

Resignation as Chief Justice 50, 27 

Sketch of, bv Bar Association Committee 3 

Sketch of, by Walter B. Hill 45 

Sketch of, by Supreme Court Committee '. 21 

Solicitor General Coweta Circuit 21, 9 

Truth, love of _ 25, 6 

Wit „ 47 

Bleckley, The Poet 133 

Branham, Joel, Address in Supreme Court 31 

Bride of Hope, The, Poem 158 

Broadway, Poem 157 

Csesarism, Poem 167 

Candler, John S., Address in Supreme Court 29 

Catoosa, Poem 161 

Causation, Poem 171 

Celerity in Judicial Administration 121 

Character of Judge Bleckley 23 

Chief Justice, Bleckley Appointed 22, 10 



INDEX 303 

PAGE 

Children of Judge Bleckley 22 

Code Procedure 127 

College Addresses 

Mercer University 173 

University of Georgia 185 

University of the South 209 

Colquitt, Alfred H., Governor, Letter to Judge Bleckley 51 

Colquitt, Senator, Remarks on death of 141 

Confederate soldier, Bleckley as a 21 

Counselor, Judge Bleckley as a 25 

Cucumbers, Poem 146 

D. C. L. conferred by University of South 210 

Death and Burial 22 

Decisions, Excerpts from 249, 48 

Doubt, discussion of 56 

"Dumb Act, The," discussed ; 221 

Early struggles at the bar 67, 8 

Education, Bleckley's 69 

Emotional Justice 97 

Excerpts from Bleckley's decisions 249, 48 

Faith, Poem 158 

Farewell to the Law, Poem 168 

Farmer, The, Poem 157 

Father, Bleckley's, Obituary of 148 

Father's Clerk 66 

Fear, Poem 159 

Funeral of Judge Bleckley , 22 

Georgia Bar Association, Addresses and Papers. 

Emotional Justice 9 7 

Judge as a Factor in Trials of Fact, The 221 

Law and the Irrelevant, The 231 

Law as a Rule of Feeling 89 

Memorial Sketch 3 

The Poet Bleckley 133 

President's Address, Causation 171 

Truth at the Bar 71 

Value as Quality 237 

Wit and Wisdom in Georgia Reports 249 

Georgia-Montana, Poem 136 



304 INDEX 

Green Bag, The page 

Walter B. Hill's sketch in 45 

Letter to Posterity in 61 

Haralson, Miss Clara Caroline, first wife 22 

Harrison, Z. D., Address in Supreme Court 35 

Herring, Miss Chloe, second wife 22 

Hill, Walter B.. Sketch of Judge Bleckley 45 

Hopkins, John L., Sketch of Judge Bleckley . 21 

Humor in Bleckley's decisions 13 

Immortality, Poem 139 

Industry, Bleckley's 27 

Intellectual Honesty, Bleckley's discussion 55 

In the Matter of Rest, Poem '. 27 

Irrelevant in Procedure 297 

Judge as a Factor in Trials of Fact, The 221 

Judge, Bleckley as a 26 

Judges in Politics 291 

Judicial Administration, Report on 121 

Justice Supreme Court, Bleckley appointed 10 

Laborious worker 13 

Lamar. J. R., Sketch of Judge Bleckley 3 

Law and the Irrelevant, The 231 

Law as a Rule of Feeling 89 

Law, begins study of ., 66, 7 

Law Love, Poem _ 145 

Law, Revised Thoughts on 298 

Lawyer, Judge Bleckley as a - 25 

Lawyers' letter asking Blecklev to be candidate for Chief 

Justice _ 26 

Lee, Rev. J. W., conducts funeral _ 22 

Letter to Posterity _ 61 

Life of Judge Bleckley 

By Committee of Georgia Bar Association 3 

By Committee of Supreme Court 19 

By Walter B. Hill 45 

Lumpkin, Justice J. H. Response to memorial 40 

Marriage, Judge Bleckley's 22 

Mathematics, Bleckley's study of _ 59, 11 

Medora, Poem .... 154 






INDEX 



305 



PAGE 

"Men of Mark in Georgia," sketch of Judge Bleckley in 17 

Mercer University, literary address 173 

Metaphysics, Bleckley's study of 59, 11 

Method of work, Bleckley's 14 

Miller, Frank H. Address in Supreme Court 32 

Mountain Flowers, Poem 168 

Mountain View, A, Poem 189 

Mother, Poem 167 

Obituary of James Bleckley 148 

October, Poem 143 

Omnipresence, Poem 1 54 

Opinions, Bleckley's 26, 15 

Opinions, excerpts from 48, 249 

Personal appearance of Judge Bleckley 22 

Phantom Lady, The, Poem 67 

Pleading, Observations on _ 292 

Poems by Judge Blecklev 

Alphabet, The 150 

Bride of Hope, The :. 158 

Broadway 157 

Caesarism . 166 

Catoosa 161 

Causation 171 

Cucumbers 146 

Faith 158 

Farewell to the Law 168 

Farmer. The 156 

Fear 159 

General Henry L. Benning 153 

Georgia-Montana 136 

Immortality : 139 

In the Matter of Rest 27 

Law Love 145 

Medora 154 

Mother 167 

Mountain Flowers 1 68 

Mountain View, A 189 

October 143 

Omnipresence 154 

Phantom Lady, The 67 



306 INDEX 

Poems by Judge Bleckley — Continued. page 

Prayer — „ ...._ _._.„.. 142 

Rats as a Type of Energy 147 

Stephens _ _ 147 

Toombs 147 

Trouble 201 

Two Cities „ 169 

Unequal Marriage _ 143 

Poems, Collection of 153 

Poet Bleckley, The, Akin's paper 133 

Poetry, Bleckley's love of 12 

Posterity, A Letter to. 61 

Proceedings in Supreme Court in memory of 19 

Prayer, Poem , 142 

Railroad Clerk, Bleckley as a 68, 21, 8 

Rats as a Type of Energy, Poem 147 

Relations with the Bar 17 

Reporter of the Supreme Court 9 

Report on Judicial Administration 121 

Resignation as Justice of Supreme Court 27, 50 

Rest, In the Matter of, Poem _ 27 

Rights of Mind, The _ 209 

Russell, Albert H., Excerpts from Bleckley's opinions 249 

Shumate, I. E., address in Supreme Court 36 

Sketch of James Bleckley 148 

Sketch of Judge Bleckley 

By Committee of Georgia Bar Association 3 

By Committee of Supreme Court 21 

By Walter B. Hill „ 45 

Soldier, Bleckley as a 68 

Solicitor General, Bleckley elected 21, 9 

Southern Law Review, article in 97 

Stephens, Poem 147 

Supreme Court Justice, appointed 68, 22, 10 

Supreme Court, Memorial proceedings in 19 

Supreme Court Reporter, appointed 68, 22, 9 

Supreme Court, Resignation from „ 27, 50 

Supreme Court, Response to memorial by Justice Lumpkin 40 

Toombs, Poem 147 

Trouble, Poem 201 



INDEX 307 

PAGE 

Truth at the Bar . 71 

Truth in Conduct 185 

Truth in Thought and Emotion 173 

Truth, Judge Bleckley's love of 25, 6 

Two Cities, Poem 169 

Underwood, Judge, lends Blackstone 7 

Unequal Marriage, Poem 143 

Uniform Procedure 121 

University of Georgia, alumni address 185 

University of the South, commencement address 209 

University of the South confers degree of D.C.L 219 

Value as Quality 237 

Wisdom, Southern Law Review article 109 

Wit and Wisdom in Georgia Reports 249 

Wit, Bleckley's 47 

Woman, Imprisonment of, for debt 24, 8 



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